bdward: 
Howard! 


^iiiiiiiiiiii 


m 


5't4iM>Jn  11 1 IIIIH    1  1 1  iMMI    HhHH    i   i hi  II H  InnHM 


THE  LIBRARY 
OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT  OF 

Santa  Barbara  Public  library 


>&' 


OK^^ 


THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 


''^^^^y^^ 


o« 


THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •     BOSTON    ■    CHICAGO 
DALLAS    •    ATLANTA    •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON    •    BOMBAY    •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LlD. 

TORONTO 


THE    SOUL 
OF    DEMOCRACY 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  WORLD  WAR 
IN  RELATION  TO  HUMAN  LIBERTY 

BY 

EDWARD  HOWARD  GRIGGS 


Man  for  the  State  means  autocracy  and  imperialism; 
Man  for  MiWfKfND  is,  me~s'ut!^~ei  democracy. 


^ett)  |9orfe 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1918 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1918 


By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
Set  up  and  Electrotyped.    Published,  Januaiy,  1918 


D 

CONTENTS 

BAFTER  PAGE 

I    The  World  Tragedy i 

II    The  Conflict  of  Ideas  in  the  War     .  7 

III  The  Ideas  for  Which  the  Allied  Na- 

tions Fight 12 

IV  Moral    Standards    and    the    Moral 

Order 19 

V   The  Present  State  of  International 

Relations 25 

VI    The  Ethics  of  International  Rela- 
tionship      36 

VII    America's     Duty     in     International 

Relations 44 

VIII    The  Gospel  and  the  Superstition  of 

Non-Resistance 50 

IX    Preparedness  for  Self-Defense     .      .  57 

X    Reconstruction  from  the  War  ...  68 

XI   The  War  AND  Education       ....  76 

XII    Socialism  and  the  War 79 

XIII  The  War  and  Feminism 85 

XIV  The  Transformation  of  Democracy    .  89 
XV    Democracy  AND  Education   ....  loi 

XVI    Menaces  of  Democracy 109 


HIS 


^QG;^^5'^ 


VI 


CONTENTS 


XVTI  The  Dilemma  OF  Democracy.      .     .     .  117 

XVIII  Paternalism  VERSUS  Democracy     .     .  122 

XIX  The  Solution  for  Democracy    .      .     .  128 

XX  Training  FOR  Moral  Leadership     .     .  136 

XXI  Democracy  and  Sacrifice      ....  146 

XXII   The  Hour  OF  Sacrifice 156 


THE 
SOUL   OF   DEMOCRACY 

I 

THE  WORLD  TRAGEDY 

We  are  living  under  the  shadow  of  the 
greatest  world  tragedy  in  the  history  of  man- 
kind. Not  even  the  overthrow  of  the  old  R.o- 
man  empire  was  so  colossal  a  disaster  as  this. 
Inevitably  we  are  bewildered  by  it.  Utterly 
unanticipated,  at  least  in  its  world  extent,  for 
we  had  believed  mankind  too  far  advanced  for 
such  a  chaos  of  brute  force  to  recur,  it  over- 
whelms our  vision.  Man  had  been  going  for- 
ward steadily,  inventing  and  discovering,  un- 
til in  the  last  hundred  years  his  whole  world 
had  been  transformed.  Suddenly  the  entire 
range  of  invention  is  turned  against  Man. 
The  machinery  of  comfort  and  progress  be- 
comes the  enginery  of  devastation.  Under 
such  a  shock,  we  ask,  "Has  civilization  over- 
reached itself?     Has  the  machine  run  away 


2        THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

with  its  maker?"  The  imagination  is  stag- 
gered. We  are  too  much  in  the  storm  to  see 
across  the  storm. 

When  the  War  began,  it  was  over  our  minds 
as  a  dark  cloud.  It  was  the  last  conscious 
thought  as  we  went  to  sleep  at  night,  and  the 
first  to  which  we  awakened  in  the  morning: 
wakening  with  a  dumb  sense  of  something 
wrong,  as  if  we  had  sufifered  a  personal  trag- 
edy, and  then  as  we  came  to  clear  conscious- 
ness we  said,  "O  yes,  the  War!"  The  days 
have  passed  into  weeks,  the  weeks  into  months 
and  years:  inevitably  we  become  benumbed 
to  the  long  continued  disaster.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  think  deaths  and  mutilations  in  terms 
of  millions.  Even  those  who  stand  in  the  im- 
mediate presence  of  it  and  suffer  most  terribly 
become  calloused  to  it:  much  more  must  we 
who  stood  so  long  apart  and  have  not  yet  felt 
the  brunt  of  it.  Even  our  entrance  into  the 
whirling  vortex,  drawing  ever  nearer  our 
shores,  has  failed  to  waken  us  to  a  realizing 
sense  of  it.  Nevertheless,  these  years  through 
which  we  are  now  living  are  the  most  impor- 
tant in  the  entire  history  of  the  world.  It  is 
probable  that  the  future  will  look  back  upon 


THE  WORLD  TRAGEDY  3 

them  as  the  years  determining  the  destiny  of 
mankind  for  ages  to  come. 

How  this  terrible  fact  of  War  falls  across 
all  philosophies!  Complacent  optimisms,  so 
widely  current  recently,  are  put  out  of  court 
by  it.  The  pleasant  interpretations  mediocrity 
formulates  of  the  universe  are  torn  to  tatters. 
There  is  at  least  the  refreshment  of  standing 
face  to  face  with  brute  actuality,  though  it 
crash  all  our  "little  systems"  to  the  ground. 
Philosophy  must  wait.  The  interpretations 
cannot  be  hastened,  while  the  facts  are  multi- 
plying with  such  bewildering  rapidity.  The 
one  certainty  is  that  an  entirely  new  world  is 
being  born — what  it  will  be,  no  one  knows. 

Nevertheless,  we  have  gone  far  enough  to 
recognize  that  all  our  thinking  will  be  trans- 
formed under  the  influence  of  the  struggle. 
It  will  be  impossible  for  us,  after  the  War,  to 
do  what  we  have  done  so  widely  hitherto :  pro- 
claim one  range  of  ethical  ideals  and  stand- 
ards, and  live  to  something  widely  different 
in  practice.  Either  we  shall  have  to  abandon 
the  standards,  or  bring  our  conduct  measur- 
ably into  harmony  with  them.  We  shall  be 
unable  longer  to  hold  unconsciously  in  solu- 


4        THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

tion  Christianity  and  the  gospel  of  brute  force. 
One  or  the  other  must  be  rejected,  or  both 
consciously  reconstructed.  The  effect  on  the 
thought  life  of  the  world  will  be  even  greater 
— vastly  greater — than  that  of  the  French 
Revolution.  The  twentieth  century  will  dif- 
fer from  the  nineteenth  more  than  that  did 
from  the  eighteenth.  The  effect  on  the  rela- 
tions of  different  social  groups  throughout  the 
world  will  be  so  far-reaching  that  possibly  the 
democracy  and  socialism  of  the  nineteenth 
century  may  look  like  remote  historic  phe- 
nomena, such  as  the  Athenian  tribal  system  or 
mediaeval  feudalism. 

Thus  our  whole  social  philosophy  will  have 
to  be  remolded.  We  Americans  are  still  in 
the  patent  medicine  period  of  politics,  trust- 
ing to  political  devices  on  the  surface  for  the 
cure  of  any  evils  that  arise.  All  across  the 
country,  like  an  epidemic  of  disease  has  gone 
the  notion — if  anything  is  the  matter  with  us, 
just  pass  another  law.  Thus  we  are  suffer- 
ing under  an  ill-considered  mass  of  legislation, 
while  blindly  trusting  to  it  to  solve  all  prob- 
lems. Legislation  is  no  solution  for  moral 
evils.     It  is  possible,  to  some  extent,  to  sup- 


THE  WORLD  TRAGEDY  5 

press  vice  by  legislation,  but  not  to  create  vir- 
tue. Virtue  can  be  developed  only  by  conduct 
and  education.  You  cannot  drive  men  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  with  the  whip  of  legisla- 
tion; and  if  you  could,  you  would  so  change 
the  atmosphere  of  the  place  that  one  would 
prefer  to  take  the  other  road. 

If  our  democracy  is  to  survive,  we  must 
think  it  through ;  carrying  it  down,  from  these 
superficial  political  devices,  into  our  industry 
and  commerce,  still  so  largely  dominated  by 
feudal  ideas  of  the  middle  age,  into  our  science 
and  art,  far  more  completely  into  our  educa- 
tion, into  our  social  relationship,  and  beyond 
all  else,  into  our  fundamental  attitude  of 
mind.  Democracy  is,  at  bottom,  not  a  series 
of  political  forms,  but  a  way  of  life. 

Thus  the  War  will  be  the  supreme  test  of 
democracy.  The  question  it  will  settle  is  this: 
can  free  men,  by  voluntary  cooperation,  de- 
velop an  efficiency  and  an  endurance  which 
will  make  it  possible  for  them  to  stand  and 
protect  their  liberties  against  the  machinery 
and  aggressive  ambitions  of  autocratic  em- 
pires where  everything  is  done  paternally 
from  the  top?    If  they  can,  then  democracy 


6        THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

will  survive  and  grow  as  the  highest  form  of 
society  for  ages  to  come;  if  not,  then  democ- 
racy will  pass  and  be  succeeded  by  some  other 
social  order. 

That  is  why  this  War  has  been  our  war 
from  the  beginning,  though  we  have  entered 
it  so  late.  As  we  look  back  upon  the  struggle 
of  Athens  and  the  other  free  Greek  cities  with 
the  overwhelming  hordes  of  Asia,  at  Mara- 
thon and  Salamis,  as  the  conflict  that  saved  de- 
mocracy for  Europe  and  made  possible  the 
civilization  of  the  Occident,  so  it  is  probable 
that  the  world  will  look  back  upon  this  colos- 
sal War  as  the  same  struggle,  multiplied  a 
thousand  times  in  the  men  and  munitions  em- 
ployed, the  struggle  determining  the  future  of 
democracy  and  civilization  for  generations, 
perhaps  for  all  time. 


II 


THE  CONFLICT  OF  IDEAS  IN  THE 
WAR 

The  world  has  been  confused  as  to  the  issue 
in  this  War,  because  of  the  multitude  of  its 
causes  and  of  the  antagonisms  it  involves;  yet 
under  all  the  national  and  racial  hatreds,  the 
economic  jealousies,  certain  great  ideas  are  be- 
ing tested  out. 

Apologists  for  Germany  have  told  us,  even 
with  pride,  that  in  Germany  the  supreme  con- 
ception is  the  dedication  of  Man  to  the  State. 
This  was  not  true  of  old  Germany.  Before 
the  formation  of  the  Prussian  empire,  her 
spirit  was  intensely  individualistic.  She  stood 
preeminently  for  freedom  of  thought  and  ac- 
tion. It  was  this  that  gave  her  noble  spiritual 
heritage.  Goethe  is  the  most  individualistic 
of  world  masters.  Froebel  developed,  in  the 
Kindergarten,  one  of  the  purest  of  democra- 
cies.   Luther  and  German  protestantism  rep- 

7 


8        THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

resented  the  affirmation  of  individual  con- 
science as  against  hierarchical  control.  It  was 
this  spirit  that  gave  Germany  her  golden  age 
of  literature,  her  unmatched  group  of  spiritual 
philosophers,  her  religious  teachers,  her  pre- 
eminence in  music. 

Nevertheless,  the  Prussian  state,  autocratic 
from  its  inception,  received  philosophic  justi- 
fication in  a  series  of  thinkers,  culminating  in 
Hegel,  who  regarded  the  individual  as  a  ca- 
pricious egotist,  the  state,  incarnate  in  its 
sovereign,  as  the  supreme  spiritual  entity.  He 
justified  war,  regarding  it  as  a  permanent  ne- 
cessity, and  practically  made  might,  right,  in 
arguing  that  a  conquering  nation  is  justified 
by  its  more  fruitful  idea  in  annexing  the 
weaker,  while  the  conquered,  in  being  con- 
quered, is  judged  of  God.  Here  is  the  philo- 
sophic justification  of  that  Prussian  arrogance 
which  in  Nietzsche  is  carried  into  glittering 
rhetoric.  Thus  the  Prussian  state  from  afar 
back  was  opposed  to  the  general  spirit  of  old 
Germany. 

Since  1870,  it  must  be  admitted,  that  spirit 
is  gone.  With  the  formation  of  the  Prussian 
empire  and  for  the  half  century  of  its  exist- 


THE  CONFLICT  OF  IDEAS        9 

ence,  every  force  of  social  control — press, 
church,  state,  education,  social  opinion — was 
deliberately  employed  to  stamp  on  the  Ger- 
man people  one  idea — the  subordination  of 
the  individual  to  the  state,  as  the  supreme  and 
only  virtue.  How  far  has  the  policy  suc- 
ceeded? Apparently  absolutely.  To  the  out- 
side observer  the  old  spirit  seems  utterly  gone. 
How  far  this  policy  has  been  helped  by  the 
cultivation  of  the  fear  of  the  Slav,  one  cannot 
say.  Looking  at  the  map  of  Europe,  one  sees 
that  the  geographical  relation  of  Germany  to 
the  great  Slavic  empire  is  not  unlike  the  re- 
lation of  Holland  to  Germany.  Thus  the  de- 
liberate fostering  of  fear  of  the  vast  empire 
of  the  East  has  done  much  to  strengthen  the 
hands  of  the  Prussian  regime  in  its  chosen 
task. 

Nevertheless,  when  one  recalls  the  spiritual 
heritage  of  Germany:  when  one  thinks  of 
Herder,  Schiller  and  Goethe;  Tauler,  Luther 
and  Schleiermacher;  Froebel,  Herbart  and 
Richter;  Kant,  Fichte  and  Novalis;  Mozart, 
Beethoven  and  Wagner;  one  feels  that  some- 
thing of  the  old  German  heritage  must  sur- 
vive.   When  the  German  people  find  out  what 


10      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

has  happened  to  them  and  why,  that  heritage 
surely  ought  to  show  in  some  reaction  against 
the  present  autocratic  regime,  after  the  War 
closes,  if  not  before,  perhaps  even  to  the  ex- 
tent of  making  Germany  a  republic.  That 
would  be  some  compensation  for  the  waste 
and  destruction  of  the  War.  Meantime  Ger- 
many stands  now,  ruthlessly,  for  the  dedica- 
tion of  Man  to  the  State. 

One  can  understand  why  a  Prussian  minis- 
ter forbade  the  teaching  of  Froebel's  ideas  in 
Prussia  during  the  latter  period  of  the  educa- 
tor's life.  So  one  understands  the  hatred  of 
Goethe  because  he  refused  allegiance  to  a  nar- 
row nationalism  and  remained  cosmopolitan 
in  his  world-view.  Similarly  Hegel,  with  his 
justification  of  absolute  monarchy  and  his  the- 
ory of  the  German  state  as  the  acme  of  all 
spiritual  evolution,  was  the  acclaimed  ortho- 
dox philosopher  of  Prussia,  while  the  individ- 
ualist, Schopenhauer,  was  neglected  and  de- 
spised. 

One  must  have  lived  in  Germany  to  realize 
the  absolute  control  of  the  State  over  the  in- 
dividual— the  incessant  surveillance,  the  petty 
regulations,  the  constant  interference  with  pri- 


THE  CONFLICT  OF  IDEAS      ii 

vate  life.  It  was  to  escape  just  this  vexatious 
control,  with  the  arduous  militarism  in  which 
it  culminates,  that  so  vast  a  multitude  of  Ger- 
mans left  their  native  land  and  came  to  the 
United  States — not  all  of  whom  have  shown 
appreciation  and  loyalty  to  the  free  land  that 
welcomed  them. 


Ill 

THE  IDEAS  FOR  WHICH  THE 
ALLIED  NATIONS  FIGHT 

In  contrast  to  the  idea  for  which  Germany 
now  stands,  the  Anglo-Saxon  instinctively  and 
tenaciously  believes  in  the  liberty  and  initia- 
tive of  the  individual.  We,  of  course,  are  no 
longer  Anglo-Saxon.  When  De  Tocqueville 
in  1 83 1  visited  our  country,  surveyed  our  in- 
stitutions and,  after  returning  home,  made  his 
trenchant  diagnosis  of  our  democracy,  he 
could  justly  designate  us  Anglo-Americans. 
That  time  is  past;  we  are  to-day  everything 
and  nothing:  a  great  nation  in  the  womb  of 
time,  struggling  to  be  born. 

Nevertheless,  Anglo-American  ideas  still 
dominate  and  inspire  our  civilization.  It  is, 
indeed,  remarkable  to  what  an  extent  this  is 
true,  in  the  face  of  the  mingling  of  hetero- 
geneous races  in  our  population.  As  English 
is  our  speech,  so  Anglo-American  ideas  are 

still  the  soul  of  our  life  and  institutions. 

12 


IDEAS  FOUGHT  FOR  13 

This  is  evident  in  the  jealousy  of  authority. 
We  resent  the  intrusion  of  the  government  into 
affairs  of  private  life,  and  prefer  to  submit  to 
annoyances  and  even  injustice  on  the  part  of 
other  individuals,  rather  than  to  have  protec- 
tion at  the  price  of  paternalistic  regulation  by 
the  state.  We  resent  any  law  that  we  do  not 
see  is  necessary  to  the  general  welfare,  and  are 
rather  lawless  even  then.  This  shows  clearly 
in  our  reaction  on  legislation  in  regard  to 
drink.  The  prohibition  of  intoxicating  liquor 
is  about  the  surest  way  to  make  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  want  to  go  out  and  get  drunk,  even 
when  he  has  no  other  inclination  in  that  direc- 
tion. In  Boston,  under  the  eleven  o'clock  clos- 
ing law,  men  in  public  restaurants  will  at 
times  order,  at  ten  minutes  of  eleven,  eight  or 
ten  glasses  of  beer  or  whiskey,  for  fear  they 
might  want  them,  whereas,  if  the  restriction 
had  not  been  present,  two  or  three  would  have 
sufficed. 

Not  long  ago  we  saw  the  very  labor  leaders 
who  forced  the  Adamson  law  through  con- 
gress, threatening  to  disobey  any  legislation 
limiting  their  own  freedom  of  action,  even 
though  vitally  necessary  to  the  freedom  of  all. 


14      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

The  general  behavior  under  automobile  and 
traffic  regulation  illustrates  the  tendency  even 
more  clearly.  Thinking  over  the  list  of  ac- 
quaintances who  own  automobiles,  one  finds 
it  hard  to  recall  one  who  would  not  break  the 
speed  law  at  a  convenient  opportunity.  Even 
a  staid  college  professor,  who  has  walked  the 
walled-in  path  all  his  life:  let  him  get  a  Ford 
runabout,  and  in  three  months  he  is  exultant 
in  running  as  close  as  possible  to  every  foot 
traveler  and  in  exceeding  the  speed  limit  at 
any  favorable  chance.  These  are  not  beauti- 
ful expressions  of  our  national  spirit,  but  they 
serve  to  illustrate  our  instinctive  individual- 
ism. 

Especially  are  we  jealous  of  highly  central- 
ized authority.  De  Tocqueville  argued  that 
we  would  never  be  able  to  develop  a  strong 
central  government,  and  that  our  democracy 
would  be  menaced  with  failure  by  that  lack. 
That  his  prophecy  has  proved  false  and  our 
federal  government  has  become  so  strong  is 
due  only  to  the  accidents  of  our  history  and 
the  exigency  of  the  tremendous  problems  we 
have  had  to  solve. 

The  same  individualistic  spirit  is  strong  in 


IDEAS  FOUGHT  FOR  15 

England.  It  has  been  particularly  evident, 
during  the  War,  in  the  resentment  of  mili- 
tary authority  as  applied  to  labor  conditions. 
The  artisans  and  their  leaders  dreaded  to  give 
up  liberties  for  which  they  had  struggled 
through  generations,  for  fear  that  those  rights 
would  not  be  readily  accorded  them  again 
after  the  War.  It  must  be  admitted  that  this 
fear  is  justified.  The  same  spirit  was  evi- 
dent in  the  fight  on  conscription.  This  atti- 
tude has  been  a  handicap  to  England  in  suc- 
cessfully carrying  on  the  War,  as  it  is  to  us; 
but  it  shows  how  strong  is  the  essential  spirit 
of  democracy  in  both  lands. 

In  France,  the  Revolution  was  at  bottom 
an  affirmation  of  individualism — of  the  right 
of  the  people,  as  against  classes  and  kings,  to 
seek  life,  liberty  and  happiness.  The  great 
words.  Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity,  that  the 
French  placed  upon  their  public  buildings  in 
the  period  of  the  Revolution,  are  the  essential 
battle-cry  of  true  democracy, — as  it  is  to  be, 
rather  than  as  it  is  at  present. 

Through  her  peculiar  situation,  threatened 
and  overshadowed  by  potential  enemies, 
France  has  been  forced  to  a  policy  of  militar- 


i6      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

ism,  with  a  large  subordination  of  the  individ- 
ual to  the  state.  The  subordination,  how- 
ever, is  voluntary.  That  is  touchingly  evident 
in  the  beautiful  fraternization  of  French  of- 
ficers and  men  in  the  present  War.  With  our 
Anglo-Saxon  reserve,  we  smile  at  the  pictures 
of  grave  generals  kissing  bearded  soldiers,  in 
recognition  of  valor,  but  it  is  a  significant  ex- 
pression of  the  voluntary  equality  and  brother- 
hood of  Frenchmen  in  this  War.  The  reason 
France  has  risen  with  such  splendid  courage 
and  unity  is  the  consciousness  of  every  French- 
man that  complete  defeat  in  this  War  would 
mean  that  there  would  be  no  France  in  the 
future,  that  Paris  would  be  a  larger  Strass- 
burg,  and  France  a  greater  Alsace-Lorraine. 
While  the  subordination  has  been  thus  volun- 
tary, surely  the  French  soldiers,  man  for  man, 
have  proved  themselves  the  equal  of  any  sol- 
diers on  earth. 

The  anomaly  of  the  first  two  years  of  the 
War  was  the  presence  of  the  vast  Russian  auto- 
cratic empire  on  the  side  of  the  allied  democ- 
racies. For  Russia,  however,  the  War  was 
of  the  people,  rather  than  of  the  autocracy  at 
the  top,  and  one  saw  that  Russia  would  emerge 


IDEAS  FOUGHT  FOR  17 

from  the  War  changed  and  purified.  What 
one  could  not  foresee  was  that,  under  the 
awakening  of  the  people,  Russia  could  pass, 
in  a  day,  through  a  Revolution  as  profound  in 
its  character  and  consequences  as  the  great  ex- 
plosion in  France.  It  would  be  almost  a  mir- 
acle if  so  complete  a  Revolution,  in  such  a 
vast,  benighted  empire,  were  not  followed  by 
decades  of  recurrent  chaos  and  anarchy.  If 
Russia  avoids  this  fate,  she  will  present  a 
unique  experience  in  history.  The  tendency 
to  abrogate  all  authority,  the  spectacle  of  regi- 
ments of  soldiers  becoming  debating  societies 
to  discuss  whether  or  not  they  shall  obey  or- 
ders and  fight,  are  ominous  signs  for  the  next 
period.  Emancipated  Russia  must  learn,  if 
necessary  through  bitter  suffering,  that  lib- 
erty is  not  license,  that  democracy  is  not  an- 
archy, but  voluntary  and  intelligent  obedience 
to  just  laws  and  the  chosen  executors  of  those 
laws.  Meantime,  whatever  her  immediate  fu- 
ture may  be,  Russia's  transformation  has  clari- 
fied the  issue  and  justified  her  place  with  the 
allied  democracies.  However  long  and  con- 
fused her  struggle,  there  can  be  no  return  to 


i8      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

the   past,   and,   in   the   end,   her   Revolution 
means  democracy. 

Thus,  in  democracy,  the  State  exists  for 
Man.  Other  forms  of  society  seek  the  interest 
or  welfare  of  an  individual,  a  group  or  a  class, 
democracy  aims  at  the  welfare,  that  is,  the  lib- 
erty, happiness,  growth,  intelligence,  helpful- 
ness of  all  the  people.  Under  all  the  welter 
of  this  world  struggle,  it  is  therefore  these 
great  contrasting  ideas  that  are  being  tested 
out,  perhaps  for  all  time.  What  is  their  rela- 
tive value  for  efficiency,  initiative,  invention, 
endurance,  permanence;  beneath  all,  what  is 
their  final  value  for  the  happiness  and  help- 
fulness of  all  human  beings? 


IV 


MORAL  STANDARDS  AND  THE 
MORAL  ORDER 

There  is  only  one  moral  order  of  the  uni- 
verse— one  range  of  moral  as  of  physical  law. 
For  instance,  the  law  of  gravitation — simplest 
of  physical  principles — holds  the  last  star  in 
the  abyss  of  space,  rounds  the  dew-drop  on 
the  petal  of  a  spring  violet  and  determines  the 
symmetry  of  living  organisms;  but  it  is  one 
and  unchanging,  a  fundamental  pull  in  the 
nature  of  matter  itself.  So  with  moral  laws: 
they  are  not  superadded  to  life  by  some  divine 
or  other  authority.  They  are  simply  the  fun- 
damental principles  in  the  nature  of  life  itself, 
which  we  must  obey  to  grow  and  be  happy. 

If  the  moral  order  is  one  and  unchanging, 
man  does  change  in  relation  to  it,  and  moral 
standards  are  relative  to  the  stage  of  his 
growth.  History  is  filled  with  illustrations  of 
this  relativity  of  ethical  standards. 

19 


20      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

For  instance:  human  slavery  doubtless  be- 
gan as  an  act  of  beneficence  on  the  part  of 
some  philanthropist  well  in  advance  of  his 
age.  The  first  man  who,  in  the  dim  dawn  of 
history,  said  to  the  captive  he  had  made  in 
war,  "I  will  not  kill  you  and  eat  you;  I  will 
let  you  live  and  work  for  me  the  rest  of  your 
life":  that  man  instituted  human  slavery;  but 
it  was  distinctly  a  step  upward,  from  some- 
thing that  had  been  far  worse. 

Homer  represents  Ulysses  as  the  favorite 
pupil  of  Pallas  Athena,  goddess  of  wisdom: 
why?  Baldly  stated,  because  Ulysses  was  the 
shrewdest  and  most  successful  liar  in  classic 
antiquity.  If  Ulysses  were  to  appear  in  a  so- 
ciety of  decent  men  to-day,  he  would  be  ex- 
cluded from  their  companionship,  and  for 
the  same  reason  that  led  Homer  to  glorify 
him  as  the  favorite  pupil  of  the  goddess  of 
wisdom.  Thus  what  is  a  virtue  at  one  stage 
of  development  becomes  a  vice  as  man  climbs 
to  higher  recognition  of  the  moral  order. 

Just  because  the  moral  standard  is  relative, 
it  is  absolutely  binding  where  it  applies.  In 
other  words,  if  you  see  the  light  shining  on 
your  path,  you  owe  obedience  to  the  light;  one 


MORAL  STANDARDS  21 

who  does  not  see  it,  does  not  owe  obedience 
in  the  same  way.  If  you  do  not  obey  your 
light,  your  punishment  is  that  you  lose  the 
light — degenerate  to  a  lower  plane,  and  it  is 
the  worst  punishment  imaginable. 

Thus  the  same  act  may  be  for  the  undevel- 
oped life,  non-moral,  for  the  developed,  dis- 
tinctly immoral.  Before  the  instincts  of  per- 
sonal modesty  and  purity  were  developed, 
careless  sex-promiscuity  meant  something  en- 
tirely different  from  what  a  descent  to  it  means 
in  our  society.  When  a  man  of  some  primi- 
tive tribe  went  out  and  killed  a  man  of  an- 
other tribe,  the  action  was  totally  different 
morally  from  the  murder  by  a  man  of  one 
community  of  a  citizen  of  a  neighboring  town 
to-day. 

This  gradual  elevation  of  moral  standards, 
or  growth  in  the  recognition  of  the  sacredness 
of  life  and  the  obligation  to  other  individuals, 
can  be  traced  historically  as  a  long  and  con- 
fused process.  There  was  a  time,  in  the  re- 
mote past,  when  no  law  was  recognized  ex- 
cept that  of  the  strong  arm.  The  man  who 
wanted  anything,  took  it,  if  he  was  strong 
enough,  and  others  submitted  to  his  superior 


22      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

force.  Then  follows  an  age  when  the  family 
is  the  supreme  social  unit.  Each  member  of 
the  family  group  feels  the  pain  or  pleasure  of 
all  the  others  as  something  like  his  own,  but 
all  outside  this  circle  are  as  the  beasts.  This 
is  the  condition  among  the  Veddahs  of  Cey- 
lon, studied  so  interestingly  by  Haeckel.  Liv- 
ing in  isolated  family  groups,  scattered 
through  the  tropical  wilderness:  one  man,  one 
woman  and  their  children  forming  the  social 
unit:  they  as  nearly  represent  primitive  life 
as  any  other  body  of  people  now  on  the  earth. 
Then  follows  a  long  roll  of  ages  when  the 
tribe  is  the  highest  social  unit.  Each  mem- 
ber of  the  tribe  is  conscious  of  the  sacredness 
of  life  of  all  the  other  members  and  of  some 
obligation  toward  them;  but  men  of  other 
tribes  may  be  slain  as  freely  as  the  beasts. 
Then  comes  a  period  when  appreciation  of  the 
sacredness  of  life  is  extended  over  all  those  of 
the  same  race,  tested  generally  by  their  speak- 
ing somewhat  the  same  language.  That  was 
the  condition  in  classic  antiquity:  it  was  "Jew 
and  Gentile,"  "Greek  and  barbarian" — the 
very  word  "barbarous"  coming  from  the  un- 
intelligible sounds,  to  the  Greeks,  of  those  who 


MORAL  STANDARDS  23 

spoke  other  than  the  Hellenic  tongue.  Even 
Plato,  with  all  his  far-sighted  humanism,  says, 
in  the  Republic,  that  in  the  ideal  state, 
"Greeks  should  deal  with  barbarians  as 
Greeks  now  deal  with  one  another."  If  one 
remembers  what  occurred  in  the  Peloponne- 
sian  war — how  Greek  men  voted  to  kill  all  the 
men  of  military  age  in  a  conquered  Greek  city 
and  sell  all  the  women  and  children  into  slav- 
ery— one  will  see  that  Plato's  dream  of  hu- 
manity was  not  so  very  wide. 

From  that  time  on,  there  has  been  further 
extension  of  the  appreciation  of  the  sacred- 
ness  of  life  and  of  the  consciousness  of  moral 
obligation  toward  other  human  beings.  We 
are  far  from  the  end  of  the  path.  Our  sym- 
pathies are  still  limited  by  accidents  of  time 
and  place,  race  and  color;  but  we  have  gone 
far  enough  to  see  what  the  end  would  be,  were 
we  to  reach  it:  a  sympathy  so  wide,  an  appre- 
ciation of  the  sacredness  of  life  so  universal, 
that  each  of  us  would  feel  the  joy  or  sorrow 
of  every  other  human  being,  alive  to-day  or 
to  be  alive  to-morrow,  as  something  like  his 
own.  Moreover,  in  all  civilized  society,  we 
have  gone  far  enough  to  renounce  the  right 


24      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

to  private  vengeance  and  adjustment  of  quar- 
rels: we  live  under  established  courts  of  law, 
with  organized  civil  force  to  carry  out  their 
judgments.  This  gives  relative  peace  and  se- 
curity, and  a  general,  if  imperfect,  applica- 
tion of  the  moral  law. 


THE  PRESENT  STATE  OF  INTERNA- 
TIONAL RELATIONS 

The  astounding  anomaly  of  modern  civili- 
zation is  the  way  we  have  lagged  behind  in 
applying  to  groups  and  nations  of  men  the 
moral  laws,  universally  recognized  as  binding 
over  individuals.  For  instance,  about  twenty 
years  ago  we  coined  and  used  widely  the 
phrase,  "soulless  corporation,"  to  designate 
our  great  combinations  of  capital  in  industry 
and  commerce.  Why  was  that  phrase  used  so 
widely?  The  answer  is  illuminating:  we  took 
it  for  granted  that  an  individual  employer 
would  treat  his  artisans  to  some  extent  as  hu- 
man beings  and  not  merely  as  cog-wheels  in 
a  productive  machine;  but  we  also  took  it 
for  granted  that  an  impersonal  corporation, 
where  no  individual  was  dominantly  responsi- 
ble, would  regard  its  artisans  merely  as  pieces 
of  machinery,  with  no  respect  whatever  for 
their  humanity. 

2S 


26      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

The  supreme  paradox,  however,  is  in  the 
relation  of  nations:  it  is  there  that  we  have 
most  amazingly  lagged  behind  in  applying  the 
moral  laws  universally  accepted  in  the  rela- 
tions of  individuals.  For  instance,  long  before 
this  War  began  we  heard  it  proclaimed,  even 
proudly,  by  certain  philosophers,  in  more  than 
one  nation,  that  the  state  is  the  supreme  spirit- 
ual unit,  that  there  is  no  law  higher  than  its 
interest,  that  the  state  makes  the  law  and  may 
break  it  at  will.  When  a  great  statesman  in 
Germany,  doubtless  in  a  moment  of  intense 
anger  and  irritation,  used  the  phrase  that  has 
gone  all  across  the  earth,  ''scrap  of  paper!'  for 
a  sacred  treaty  between  nations,  he  was  only 
making  a  pungent  practical  application  of  the 
philosophy  in  question. 

Do  we  regard  self-preservation  as  the  high- 
est law  for  the  individual?  Distinctly  not. 
Here  is  a  crowded  theater  and  a  sudden  cry 
of  fire,  with  the  ensuing  panic:  if  strong  men 
trample  down  and  kill  women  and  children, 
in  the  effort  to  save  their  own  lives,  we  regard 
them  with  loathing  and  contempt.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  just  this  plea  of  national  self- 
preservation  that  the  German  regime  has  used 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS    27 

in  cynical  justification  of  its  every  atrocity — 
the  initial  violation  of  Belgium,  the  making 
war  ruthlessly  on  civil  populations,  the  atro- 
cious spying  and  plotting  in  the  bosom  of  neu- 
tral and  friendly  nations,  the  destruction  of 
monuments  of  art  and  devastation  of  the 
cities,  fields,  orchards  and  forests  of  northern 
France,  and  finally  the  submarine  warfare  on 
the  world's  shipping.  No  civilized  human 
being  would,  for  a  moment,  think  of  using  the 
plea  of  self-preservation  to  justify  comparable 
conduct  in  individual  life. 

Consider  international  diplomacy:  much  of 
it  has  been  merely  shrewd  and  skillful  lying. 
If  you  will  review  the  list  of  the  most  famous 
diplomats  of  Europe  for  the  last  thousand 
years,  you  will  find  that  a  considerable  portion 
of  them  won  their  fame  and  reputation  by  be- 
ing a  little  more  shrewd  and  successful  liars 
than  the  diplomats  with  whom  they  had  to 
deal  in  other  lands.  In  other  words,  their  con- 
duct has  been  exactly  on  the  plane  that  Ulysses 
represented  in  personal  life,  afar  back  in  clas- 
sic antiquity. 

Take  an  illustration  a  little  nearer  home. 
If  you  were  doing  business  on  one  side  of  the 


28      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

street  and  had  two  competitors  in  the  same 
line,  across  the  way,  and  a  cyclone  swept  the 
town,  destroying  their  establishments  and 
sparing  yours:  you,  as  an  individual,  would  be 
ashamed  to  take  advantage  of  the  disaster  un- 
der which  your  rivals  were  suffering,  using 
the  time  while  they  were  out  of  business  to 
lure  their  customers  away  from  them  and  bind 
those  customers  to  you  so  securely  that  your 
competitors  would  never  be  able  to  get  them 
back.  You  would  scorn  such  conduct  as  an 
individual;  but  when  it  comes  to  a  relation  of 
the  nations :  during  the  first  two  years  of  the 
War,  from  the  highest  government  circles 
down  to  the  smallest  country  newspaper,  we 
were  urged  to  take  advantage  of  the  disaster 
under  which  our  European  rivals  were  suffer- 
ing, win  their  international  customers  away 
from  them  and  bind  those  customers  to  us  so 
securely  that  Europe  would  never  be  able  to 
get  them  back.  Not  that  we  were  urged  to  in- 
dustry and  enterprise — that  is  always  right — 
but  actually  to  seek  to  profit  by  the  sufferings 
of  others — conduct  we  would  regard  as  utterly 
unworthy  in  personal  life. 

If  your  neighbor  were  to  say,  "My  personal 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS    29 

aspirations  demand  this  portion  of  your  front 
yard,"  and  he  were  to  attempt  to  fence  it  in: 
the  situation  is  unimaginable;  but  when  a  na- 
tion says,  "My  national  aspirations  demand 
this  portion  of  your  territory,"  and  proceeds 
to  annex  it:  if  the  nation  is  strong  enough  to 
carry  it  out,  a  large  part  of  the  world  ac- 
quiesces. 

The  relations  of  nations  are  thus  still  largely 
on  the  plane  of  primitive  life  among  individ- 
uals, or,  since  nations  are  made  up  of  civil- 
ized and  semi-civilized  persons,  it  would  be 
fairer  to  say  that  the  relations  of  nations  are 
comparable  to  those  prevailing  among  indi- 
viduals when  a  group  of  men  goes  far  out 
from  civil  society,  to  the  frontier,  beyond  the 
reach  of  courts  of  law  and  their  police  forces: 
then  nearly  always  there  is  a  reversion  to  the 
rule  of  the  strong  arm.  That  is  what  Kipling 
meant  in  exclaiming. 


'There's  never  a  law  of  God  or  man  runs  north  of  fifty- 
three." 


That   condition   prevailed    all    across   our 
frontier  in  the  early  days.     For  instance,  the 


30      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

cattle  men  came,  pasturing  their  herds  on  the 
hills  and  plains,  using  the  great  expanse  of 
land  not  yet  taken  up  by  private  ownership. 
A  little  later  came  the  sheep  men,  with  vast 
flocks  of  sheep,  which  nibbled  every  blade  of 
grass  and  other  edible  plant  down  to  the 
ground,  thus  starving  out  the  cattle.  What 
followed?  The  cattle  men  got  together  by 
night,  rode  down  the  sheep-herders,  shot  them 
or  drove  them  out,  or  were  themselves  driven 
out. 

So  on  the  frontier,  in  the  early  days,  a  weak- 
ling staked  out  an  agricultural  or  mining 
claim.  A  ruffian  appears,  who  is  a  sure  shot, 
jumps  the  claim  and  drives  the  other  out.  It 
was  the  rule  of  the  strong  arm,  and  it  was  evi- 
dent on  the  frontier  all  across  the  country. 

This  is  exactly  the  state  that  a  considerable 
part  of  the  world  has  reached  in  international 
relationship  to-day.  Claim-jumping  is  still 
accepted  and  widely  practised  among  the  na- 
tions. That  is,  in  fact,  the  way  in  which  all 
empires  have  been  built — by  a  succession  of 
successful  claim-jumpings.  Consider  the  most 
impressive  of  them  all,  the  old  Roman  em- 
pire.   Rome  was  a  city  near  the  mouth  of  the 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS    31 

Tiber.  She  reached  out  and  conquered  a  few 
neighboring  cities  in  the  Latin  plain,  binding 
them  securely  to  herself  by  domestic  and  eco- 
nomic ties.  Then  she  extended  her  power 
south  and  north,  crossed  into  northern  Africa, 
conquered  Gaul  and  Spain,  swept  Asia  Minor, 
until  a  territory  three  thousand  by  two  thou- 
sand miles  in  extent  was  under  the  sway  of  her 
all-conquering  arm. 

What  justified  Rome,  as  far  as  she  had  justi- 
fication, was  the  remarkable  strength  and  wis- 
dom with  which  she  established  law  and  order 
and  the  protections  of  civil  society  over  all  the 
conquered  territory,  until  often  the  subject 
populations  were  glad  they  had  come  und-er 
the  all-dominant  sway  of  Rome,  since  their 
situation  was  so  much  more  peaceful  and 
happy  than  before.  Such  justification,  how- 
ever, is  after  the  fact:  it  is  not  moral  justifi- 
cation of  the  building  of  the  empire.  That 
represented  a  succession  of  claim-jumpings. 

For  an  illustration  from  more  modern  his- 
tory, take  the  greatest  international  crime  of 
the  last  five  hundred  years,  with  one  exception 
— the  partition  of  Poland.  It  is  true  the  Po- 
lish nobles  were  a  nuisance  to  their  neighbors, 


32      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

ever  quarreling  among  themselves,  with  no 
central  authority  powerful  enough  to  restrain 
them,  but  that  did  not  justify  the  action  taken. 
Three  nations,  or  rather  the  autocratic  sov- 
ereigns of  those  nations,  powerful  enough  to 
accomplish  the  crime,  agreed  to  partition  Po- 
land among  themselves.  They  did  it,  with  the 
result  that  there  are  plenty  of  Poles  in  the 
world  to-day,  but  there  is  no  Poland. 

Consider  the  possession  of  Silesia  by  Prus- 
sia. Silesia  was  an  integral  part  of  the  Aus- 
trian domain,  long  so  recognized.  Friedrich 
the  Great  wanted  it.  He  annexed  it.  The 
deed  caused  him  many  years  of  recurring,  dev- 
astating wars;  again  and  again  he  was  near 
the  point  of  utter  defeat;  but  he  succeeded  in 
bringing  the  war  to  a  successful  conclusion, 
and  Silesia  is  part  of  Prussia  to-day.  The 
strong  arm  conquest  is  the  only  reason. 

So  is  it  with  Germany's  possession  of  Schles- 
wig-Holstein,  with  Austria  in  Herzegovina 
and  Bosnia,  France  in  Algiers,  Italy  in  Tri- 
poli:  they  are  all  instances  of  claim-jumping, 
reprehensible  in  varying  degrees. 

I  suppose  no  thoughtful  Englishman  would 
attempt  to  justify,  on  high  moral  grounds,  the 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS    33 

building  up  of  the  British  empire:  for  in- 
stance, the  possession  of  Egypt  and  India  by 
Britain.  How  does  India  happen  to  be  a  part 
of  the  British  realm?  Every  one  knows  the 
answer.  The  East  India  Company  was  simply 
the  most  adventurous  and  enterprising  trading 
company  then  in  the  world.  It  grew  rich 
trading  with  the  Orient,  established  the  su- 
premacy of  the  British  merchant  marine,  got 
into  difficulties  with  French  rivals  and  native 
rulers,  fought  brilliantly  for  its  rights,  as  it 
had  every  reason  to  do,  conquered  territory 
and  consolidated  its  possessions,  ruling  chiefly 
through  native  princes.  It  became  so  power- 
ful that  it  did  not  seem  wise  to  the  British  gov- 
ernment to  permit  a  private  corporation  to 
exercise  such  ever-growing  political  author- 
ity. It  was  regulated,  and  in  the  end  abol- 
ished, by  act  of  Parliament;  its  possessions 
were  taken  over  by  the  Crown;  the  conquests 
were  extended  and  completed,  and  India  to- 
day is  a  gem  in  the  crown  of  the  British  em- 
pire. 

What  justifies  Britain,  as  far  as  she  has  jus- 
tification, is  the  remarkable  wisdom  and  gen- 
erosity with  which  she  has  extended,  not  only 


34      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

law  and  order  and  protection  to  life  and  prop- 
erty, but  freedom  and  autonomous  self-gov- 
ernment, to  her  colonies  and  subject  popula- 
tions, with  certain  tragic  exceptions,  about  as 
fast  as  this  could  safely  be  done.  It  is  that 
which  holds  the  British  empire  together. 
Great  irregular  empire,  stretching  over  a  large 
part  of  the  globe:  but  for  this  it  would  fall  to 
pieces  over  night.  It  would  be  impossible 
for  force,  administered  at  the  top,  to  hold  it 
together.  The  splendid  response  of  her  col- 
onies in  this  War  has  been  purely  voluntary. 
That  Canada  has  four  hundred  thousand 
trained  men  at  the  front,  or  ready  to  go,  is  due 
wholly  to  her  free  response  to  the  wise  gener- 
osity of  England's  policy,  and  in  no  degree  to 
compulsion,  which  would  have  been  impossi- 
ble. This  justification  of  the  British  empire 
is,  nevertheless,  as  in  the  case  of  Rome,  after 
the  fact,  and  does  not  justify  morally  the 
building  up  of  the  empire. 

Our  own  hands  are  not  entirely  clean.  It 
is  true  we  came  late  on  the  stage  of  history, 
and,  starting  as  a  democracy,  were  instinc- 
tively opposed  to  empire  building.  Thus  our 
brief  record  is  cleaner  than  that  of  the  older 


INTERNATIONAL  RELATIONS    35 

nations.  Nevertheless,  there  are  examples  of 
claim-jumping  in  our  history.  The  most 
tragic  of  all  is  a  large  part  of  our  treatment 
of  the  American  Indians.  It  is  true,  with 
Anglo-Saxon  hypocrisy,  we  tried  to  make 
every  steal  a  bargain.  Many  an  expanse  of 
territory  has  been  bought  with  a  jug  of  rum. 
The  Indian  knew  nothing  about  the  owner- 
ship of  land;  we  did.  So  we  made  the  deed, 
and  he  accepted  it.  Then,  to  his  surprise,  he 
found  he  had  to  move  off  from  land  where 
for  generations  his  ancestors  had  hunted  and 
fought,  with  no  idea  of  private  ownership. 
So  we  pushed  him  on  and  on.  Of  late  decades 
we  have  become  ashamed,  tried  in  awkward 
fashion  to  render  some  compensation  for  the 
wrongs  done,  but  the  larger  part  of  the  story 
is  sad  indeed. 

There  is,  of  course,  another  side  to  all  this: 
the  more  highly  developed  nations  do  owe 
leadership  and  service  in  helping  those  below 
to  climb  the  path  of  civilization;  but  let  one 
answer  fairly  how  much  of  empire  building 
has  been  due  to  this  altruistic  spirit,  and  how 
much  to  selfishness  and  the  lust  for  power  and 
possession.  ~" 


VI 


THE  ETHICS  OF  INTERNATIONAL 
RELATIONSHIP 

We  have  seen  that  all  empires  have  been 
built  up  by  a  series  of  successful  aggressions, 
and  that  claim-jumping  still  characterizes  the 
relations  of  the  nations.  Nevertheless,  there 
has  been  some  progress  in  applying  to  groups 
and  nations  the  moral  principles  we  recognize 
as  binding  upon  individuals.  Consider  again 
our  internal  life:  it  was  twenty  years  ago  that 
we  coined  and  used  so  widely  the  phrase  "soul- 
less corporations"  for  our  great  combinations 
of  capital  in  industry.  To-day  that  phrase  is 
rarely  heard.  One  sees  it  seldom  even  in  the 
pages  of  surviving  "muck-raking"  magazines. 
Why  has  a  phrase,  used  so  widely  in  the  past, 
all  but  disappeared?  Again  the  answer  is  il- 
luminating: there  has  been  tremendous  growth 
in  twenty  years,  on  the  part  of  our  great  cor- 
porations, in  treating  their  employees  as  hu- 

36 


INTERNATIONAL  ETHICS       37 

man  beings  and  not  merely  as  cog-wheels  in  a 
productive  machine.  When  the  greatest  cor- 
poration in  the  United  States  voluntarily  raises 
the  wages  of  all  its  employees  in  the  country 
ten  per  cent.,  five  several  times,  within  a  few 
months,  as  the  Steel  trust  has  recently  done, 
something  has  happened.  It  may  be  said, 
"they  did  it  because  it  was  good  business": 
twenty  years  ago  they  would  not  have  recog- 
nized that  it  was  good  business.  It  may  be 
said,  "they  did  it  to  avoid  strikes":  twenty 
years  ago  they  would  have  welcomed  the 
strikes,  fought  them  through  and  gained  what 
selfish  advantage  was  possible.  The  point  is, 
there  has  been  vast  increase  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  moral  responsibility  on  the  part  of  cor- 
porations toward  their  artisans.  This  has 
been  due  partly  to  legislation,  but  mainly  to 
education  and  the  awakening  of  public  con- 
science. If  you  wish  to  find  the  greatest  arro- 
gance and  selfishness  now,  you  will  discover 
it,  not  among  the  capitalists:  they  are  timid 
and  submissive — strangely  so.  You  will  find 
it  rather  in  certain  leaders  of  the  labor  move- 
ment, with  their  consciousness  of  newly- 
gained  powers. 


38      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

Some  growth  there  has  been  in  the  applica- 
tion of  the  same  moral  principles  even  to  the 
relations  of  the  nations.  For  instance:  a  hun- 
dred years  ago  the  Napoleonic  wars  had  just 
come  to  an  end.  In  the  days  of  Napoleon  men 
generally  gloried  in  war;  to-day  most  of  them 
bitterly  regret  it,  and  fight  because  they  be- 
lieve they  are  fighting  for  high  moral  aims  or 
for  national  self-preservation,  whether  they 
are  right  or  wrong. 

When  Napoleon  conquered  a  country,  often 
he  pushed  the  weakling  king  off  the  throne, 
and  replaced  him  with  a  member  of  his  own 
family — at  times  a  worse  weakling.  Think  of 
such  a  thing  being  attempted  to-day:  it  is  un- 
imaginable, unless  the  worst  tyranny  on  earth 
got  the  upper  hand  for  the  next  three  hundred 
years  of  human  history. 

A  more  pungent  illustration  of  progress  is 
the  feverish  desire,  shown  by  each  of  the  com- 
batants in  this  world  struggle,  to  prove  that  he 
did  not  begin  it.  Now  some  one  began  it.  A 
hundred  years  ago  belligerents  would  not  have 
been  so  anxious  to  prove  their  innocence:  then 
victory  closed  all  accounts  and  no  one  went  be- 
hind the  returns.    The  feverish  anxiety  each 


INTERNATIONAL  ETHICS       39 

combatant  has  shown  to  establish  his  inno- 
cence of  initiating  this  devastating  War  is  con- 
clusive proof  that  even  the  worst  of  them 
recognizes  that  they  all  must  finally  stand  be- 
fore the  moral  court  of  the  world's  conscience 
and  be  judged.  The  same  tendency  is  shown 
in  the  efforts  of  Germany — grotesquely  and 
tragically  sophistical  as  they  are — to  justify 
her  ever-expanding,  freshly-invented  atroci- 
ties. At  least  she  is  aware  that  they  require 
justification. 

This  explains  why  we  react  so  bitterly  even 
on  what  would  have  been  accepted  a  century 
ago.  What  was  taken  for  granted  yesterday  is 
not  tolerated  to-day,  and  what  is  taken  for 
granted  to-day  will  not  be  tolerated  in  a  to- 
morrow that  maybe  is  not  so  distant  as  in  our 
darker  moments  we  imagine. 

What  would  be  the  conclusion  of  this  pro- 
cess? It  would  be,  would  it  not,  the  complete 
application  to  the  relations  of  the  nations,  of 
the  moral  principles  universally  accepted  as 
binding  upon  individuals?  If  it  is  true  that 
the  moral  order  of  the  universe  is  one  and  un- 
changing, then  ivhat  is  right  for  a  man  is  right 
for  a  nation  of  men,  and  what  is  wrong  for  a 


40      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

man  is  ivrong  for  a  nation;  and  no  fallacious 
reasoning  should  be  allowed  to  blind  us  to  that 
basic  truth. 

This  would  mean  the  end  of  all  diplomacy 
of  lying  and  deceit.  The  relations  of  the  na- 
tions would  be  placed  on  the  same  plane  of 
relative  honesty  and  frankness  now  prevailing 
among  individuals :  not  absolute  truth — few  of 
us  practice  that — but  that  general  ability  to 
trust  each  other,  in  word  and  conduct,  that  is 
the  foundation  of  our  business  and  social  life. 

It  would  mean  the  end  of  empire  building. 
Those  empires  that  exist  would  fall  naturally 
into  their  component  parts.  If  those  parts  re- 
mained affiliated  with  the  central  government, 
it  would  be  only  through  the  voluntary  choice 
of  the  majority  of  the  population  dwelling 
upon  the  territory.  Thus  every  people  would 
be  affiliated  with  the  government  to  which  it 
naturally  belonged  and  with  which  it  wished 
to  be  affiliated. 

It  would  mean  finally  a  voluntary  federa- 
tion of  the  nations,  with  the  establishment  of 
a  world  court  of  justice;  but  no  weak-kneed, 
spineless  arbitration  court:  rather  a  court  of 
justice,  comparable  to  those  established  over 


INTERNATIONAL  ETHICS       41 

individuals,  whose  judgments  would  be  en- 
forced by  an  international  military  and  naval 
police,  contributed  by  the  federated  nations. 

People  misunderstand  this  proposal.  They 
imagine  it  would  mean  the  giving  over  of  the 
entire  military  and  naval  equipment  of  each 
federated  nation  to  the  central  court.  Far 
from  it:  each  nation  would  retain,  for  defense 
purposes,  the  mass  of  its  manhood  and  the 
larger  fraction  of  its  limited  equipment,  while 
a  minor  fraction  would  be  contributed  to  the 
world  court. 

When  this  is  achieved  there  will  be,  for  the 
first  time  in  the  history  of  the  world,  the  dawn 
of  the  longed-for  era  of  universal  and  rela- 
tively permanent  peace  for  mankind. 

It  is  a  far-off  dream,  is  it  not?  Let  us  ad- 
mit it  frankly,  and  it  seems  further  off  than 
it  did  four  years  ago;  for  the  approximations 
to  it,  achieved  through  international  law,  we 
have  seen  go  down  in  a  blind  welter,  through 
the  invention  of  new  instruments  of  destruc- 
tion and  the  willful  perpetration  of  illegal 
and  immoral  atrocities  in  this  horrible  War. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  not  so  far  off  as  in  our 


42      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

darker  moments  we  fear.  If  this  world  War 
ends  justly;  which  means  if  it  ends  so  that  the 
people  dwelling  on  any  territory  are  affiliated 
with  the  government  to  which  they  naturally 
belong  and  with  which  they  wish  to  be  affili- 
ated, the  dream  will  be  brought  appreciably 
nearer.  If  the  War  ends  unjustly,  which 
means  if  it  ends  with  the  gratification  of  the 
ambitions  of  aggressive  tyranny,  the  dream 
will  be  put  remotely  far  off.  If  a  peace  is 
patched  up  meantime,  with  no  solution,  it  will 
mean  Europe  sleeping  on  its  arms,  and  the 
breaking  out  of  the  war  with  multiplied  devas- 
tation within  twenty  years.  That  is  why  these 
blithely  undertaken  peace  missions  and  other 
efforts  at  peace  without  victory,  even  when  not 
cloaks  for  pro-German  movements,  are  such 
preposterous  absurdities  or  else  play  directly 
into  the  hands  of  tyranny. 

At  best,  however,  the  dream  is  a  long  way 
ahead.  Men  dislike  to  give  up  power,  nations 
equally.  It  will  take  a  long  process  of  inter- 
national moral  education  to  induce  the  nations 
to  renounce  their  arbitrary  powers,  their  right 
to  adjust  all  their  own  quarrels,  and  lead  them 


INTERNATIONAL  ETHICS       43 

to  enter  voluntarily  a  federation  under  a  world 
court  of  justice.  This,  nevertheless,  is  the 
hope  of  the  world,  toward  which  we  should 
work  with  all  our  might. 


VII 

AMERICA'S  DUTY  IN  INTERNA- 
TIONAL RELATIONS 

Since  the  world  solution  is,  at  best,  so  re- 
mote, our  question  is :  what  are  we  to  do  mean- 
time? Our  entrance  into  the  War  partially 
answers  the  question.  We  have  before  us  the 
immediate  task  of  aiding  in  overthrowing 
autocracy  and  tyranny  and  of  defending  our 
liberties  and  those  of  the  nations  that  stand  for 
democracy.  This  is  the  first  duty,  but  not  the 
only  one. 

More  definitely  than  any  other  nation  we 
have  thrown  down  to  the  world  the  challenge 
of  democracy.  We  have  said,  "Away  with 
kings,  we  will  have  no  more  of  them!  Away 
with  castes  and  ruling  classes,  we  will  have  no 
more  of  them!"  As  a  matter  of  fact,  democ- 
racies have  no  rulers — the  word  survives  from 
an  older  order  of  society — they  have  guides, 
leaders  and  representatives.     If  you  wish  to 

A  4 


AMERICA'S  DUTY  45 

use  the  word,  in  a  democracy  every  man  is  the 
ruler — and  every  woman  too,  we  hope,  before 
long.  To  this  ideal  we  are  committed  and  it 
carries  certain  obligations ;  for  every  right  car- 
ries a  duty,  and  every  duty,  a  right.  Often  the 
best  way  to  get  a  privilege  is  by  assuming  a 
responsibility.  That  is  a  truth  it  would  be 
well  for  the  leaders  of  the  feminist  and  labor 
movements  to  recognize.  The  obligations  car- 
ried by  the  challenge  of  our  democracy  are 
clear. 

We  Americans  should  have  done,  once  and 
for  all  time,  with  the  diplomacy  of  lying  and 
deceit.  Fortunately  our  recent  traditions  are 
in  harmony  with  this  demand;  but  we  should 
not  depend  upon  the  happy  accident  of  an  ad- 
ministration which  takes  the  right  attitude.  It 
should  be  the  open  and  universal  demand  of 
the  American  people  that  those  who  represent 
us  shall  place  the  relations  v/e  sustain  to  other 
nations  permanently  on  the  same  plane  of 
frank  honesty,  generally  prevailing  among  in- 
dividuals. Incidentally,  any  politician  or 
statesman  who,  at  this  heart-breaking  crisis  of 
the  world's  life,  dares  play  party  politics  with 
our  international  relations,  should  be  damned 


46      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

forever  by  the  vote  of  the  American  people. 

Further,  it  is  our  duty  to  have  done  with  all 
dream  of  empire  building.  It  is  not  for  us: 
let  us  abandon  it  frankly  and  forever.  Those 
dependencies  w^hich  have  come  to  us  through 
the  accidents  of  our  history  should  be  granted 
autonomous  self-government  at  the  earliest 
moment  at  which  they  can  safely  take  it  over 
— which  does  not  necessarily  mean  to-morrow. 
If  they  remain  affiliated  with  us  it  should  be 
only  through  the  voluntary  choice  of  the  ma- 
jority of  the  population  dwelling  upon  them. 

It  is,  moreover,  our  duty  to  lead  the  world 
in  the  effort  to  form  a  federation  of  the  na- 
tions and  establish  the  aforesaid  world  court 
of  justice,  with  the  international  military  and 
naval  police  to  enforce  its  judgments. 

More  than  this  is  demanded:  on  the  basis  of 
the  challenge  of  our  democracy,  it  is  our  duty 
to  rise  to  the  point  of  placing  justice  higher 
than  commercial  interest.  It  is  a  hard  de- 
mand; but,  with  the  latent  idealism  in  our 
American  life,  surely  we  can  rise  to  it.  For 
instance,  the  vexed  puzzle  of  the  tariff  will 
never  be  justly  and  permanently  settled,  till  it 
is  settled  primarily  as  a  problem  of  moral  in- 


AMERICA'S  DUTY  47 

ternational  relationship,  and  not  as  one  merely 
of  economic  interest  and  advantage. 

For  example,  a  tariff  wall  between  the 
United  States  and  Canada  is  as  preposterous 
an  absurdity  as  would  be  a  long  line  of  brist- 
ling fortifications  along  the  three  thousand 
and  more  miles  of  international  boundary. 
We  are  not  protecting  ourselves  from  slave 
labor  over  there.  They  are  not  protecting 
themselves  from  slave  labor  here.  Barring  a 
few  lines  of  industry,  there  are  the  same  con- 
ditions of  labor,  production  and  distribution 
both  sides  of  the  line.  The  only  reason  for  a 
tariff  wall  is  their  wish,  or  our  wish,  or  the 
wish  of  each,  to  gain  some  advantage  at  the 
expense  of  the  other  party.  Now  every  busi- 
ness man  knows  that  any  trade  that  benefits 
one  and  injures  the  other  party  to  it  is  bad 
business,  as  well  as  bad  ethics,  in  the  long 
run.  Good  business  benefits  both  traders  all 
the  time. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  it  comes  to  pro- 
tecting our  labor  from  competition  with  slave 
labor  in  other  quarters  of  the  earth,  we  have 
not  only  the  right,  but  the  duty  to  do  it.  So 
when  it  is  a  matter  of  protecting  our  indus- 


48      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

tries  from  being  swamped  by  the  unloading  of 
vast  quantities  of  goods,  produced  under  the 
feverish  and  abnormal  conditions,  sure  to  pre- 
vail in  Europe  after  the  War,  we  have  again, 
not  only  the  right,  but  the  duty  to  do  it. 

Finally,  a  still  higher  call  is  upon  us:  we 
must  somehow  rise  to  the  point  of  placing  hu- 
manity above  the  nation.  It  is  true,  "Charity 
begins  at  home,"  certainly  justice  should. 
One  should  educate  one's  own  children,  be- 
fore worrying  over  the  children  of  the  neigh- 
borhood; clean  up  one's  own  town,  before 
troubling  about  the  city  further  away.  Often 
the  whole  is  helped  best  by  serving  the  part; 
but  it  is  with  national  patriotism  as  it  is  with 
family  affection.  The  latter  is  a  lovely  qual- 
ity and  the  source  of  much  that  is  best  in  the 
world;  but  when  family  affection  is  an  instru- 
ment for  gaining  special  privilege  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  good  of  society,  a  means  of  at- 
taining debauching  luxury  and  selfish  ag- 
grandisement, it  is  an  abomination.  The  man 
who  prays  God's  blessing  on  himself,  his  wife 
and  his  children,  and  nobody  else,  is  a  mean 
man,  and  he  never  gets  blessed — not  from 
God.     Similarly,  the  man  who  seeks  the  in- 


AMERICA'S  DUTY  49 

terest  of  his  own  nation,  against  the  welfare 
of  mankind,  who  prays  God's  blessing  only  on 
his  own  people,  is  equally  a  mean  man,  and 
his  prayer,  also,  is  never  answered  from  the 
Most  High.  The  world  has  advanced  too  far 
for  the  spirit  of  a  narrow  nationalism.  The 
recrudescence  of  such  a  spirit  is  one  of  the 
sad  consequences  of  this  world  War.  Only  in 
a  spirit  of  international  brotherhood,  in  dedi- 
cation to  the  welfare  of  humanity,  can  democ- 
racy go  towards  its  goal. 

These  are  the  obligations  following  upon 
the  challenge  of  democracy  we  have  pro- 
claimed to  the  nations. 


VIII 

THE  GOSPEL  AND  THE  SUPERSTI- 
TION OF  NON-RESISTANCE 

The  first  condition  of  fulfilling  the  respon- 
sibilities imposed  upon  us  by  the  challenge  of 
our  democracy  is,  now  and  hereafter,  readi- 
ness and  willingness  for  self-respecting  self- 
defense,  defense  of  our  liberties  and  of  the 
principles  and  ideals  for  which  we  stand. 
There  is  much  nonsense  talked  about  non-re- 
sistance to  evil.  It  is  a  lovely  thing  in  certain 
high  places  of  the  moral  life.  It  was  well  that 
Socrates  remained  in  the  common  criminal 
prison  in  Athens  and  drank  the  hemlock  poi- 
son; but  nine  times  out  of  ten  it  would  have 
been  better  to  run  away,  as  he  had  an  oppor- 
tunity to  do.  It  was  good  that  Jesus  healed 
the  ear  of  the  servant  of  the  high  priest, — and 
good  that  St.  Peter  cut  it  off. 

In  other  words,  acts  of  non-resistance  and 
self-sacrifice  are  fine  flowers  of  the  moral  life; 

50 


THEORY  OF  NON-RESISTANCE     51 

but  you  cannot  have  flowers  unless  their  roots 
are  below  ground,  otherwise  they  quickly 
wither.  Thus,  to  have  sound  value,  these  acts 
of  non-resistance  and  self-sacrifice  must  rest 
on  a  solid  foundation  of  self-affirmation  and 
resistance  to  evil. 

As  with  the  individual,  so  with  the  nation: 
there  come  high  moments  in  a  nation's  life, 
when  a  strong  people  might  resist  and  delib- 
erately chooses  not  to.  As  an  illustration,  take 
our  Mexican  problem.  The  announcement 
that  under  no  circumstances  would  we  inter- 
vene, may  have  led  to  misunderstanding.  Our 
purpose  to  let  the  Mexican  people  work  out 
their  own  problem  may  have  been  taken  to 
mean  that  we  would  not  justly  protect  our- 
selves, with  consequent  encouragement  to  bor- 
der raiding.  Nevertheless,  if  there  has  been 
any  error  in  handling  the  situation,  it  has  been 
on  the  better  side — on  the  side  of  patience, 
generosity,  long-suffering,  giving  the  other 
fellow  another  chance,  and  another  and  an- 
other, even  though  he  does  not  deserve  them. 
Now  that  is  not  the  side  on  which  hum.an  na- 
ture usually  errs.  The  common  temptation  is 
to  selfishness  and  unjust  aggression.     Since 


52      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

that  is  the  case,  if  we  cannot  strike  the  just 
balance,  it  is  better  to  push  too  far  on  the  other 
side  and  avoid  the  common  mistake. 

Suppose,  after  the  War,  Japan,  alone  or  in 
conjunction  with  one  or  another  European 
power,  closes  the  door  to  China:  one  can 
imagine  circumstances  where  we,  with  the 
right  to  insist  that  the  door  be  kept  open,  and 
perhaps,  by  that  time,  something  of  the 
strength  to  enforce  that  right,  might  deliber- 
ately say,  "No,  we  will  not  resist."  Not  that, 
with  our  present  situation,  such  action  is  de- 
sirable, but  that  one  can  imagine  conditions 
arising  where  it  might  be  the  higher  choice. 

Let  me  repeat  that,  for  the  nation  as  with 
the  individual,  these  high  moments  must  rest 
on  something  else.  They  are  the  high  moun- 
tain peaks  of  the  moral  life;  but  detached 
mountain  peaks  are  impossible, — except  as  a 
mirage.  They  must  rest  upon  the  granite 
foundation  of  the  hills  and  plateaus  below. 
So  these  high  virtues  of  non-resistance,  mag- 
nanimity and  self-sacrifice  must  always  rest 
upon  the  granite  foundation  of  the  masculine 
virtues  of  self-affirmation,  endurance,  hero- 
ism, strong  conflict  with  evil.    It  takes  strength 


THEORY  OF  NON-RESISTANCE    53 

to  make  magnanimity  and  self-sacrifice  possi- 
ble, if  their  lesson  is  not  lost.  A  weak  man 
cannot  be  magnanimous,  since  his  generosity 
is  mistaken  for  servile  cowardice.  After  all, 
the  best  time  to  forgive  your  enemy,  for  his 
good  and  yours,  is  not  when  he  has  his  foot  on 
your  neck:  he  is  apt  to  misunderstand  and 
think  you  are  afraid.  It  is  often  better  to  wait 
until  you  can  get  on  your  feet  and  face  him, 
man  to  man,  and  then  if  you  can  forgive  him, 
it  is  so  much  the  better  for  you,  for  him  and 
for  all  concerned. 

Thus  there  are  two  opposite  lines  of  error 
in  the  moral  life.  The  philosophy  of  the  one 
is  given  by  Nietzsche,  while  Tolstoy,  in  cer- 
tain extremes  of  his  teaching,  represents  the 
other.  Nietzsche,  I  suppose,  should  be  re- 
garded as  a  symptom,  rather  than  a  cause  of 
anything  important;  but  the  ancestors  of 
Nietzsche  were  Goethe  and  Ibsen,  with  their 
splendid  gospel  of  self-realization.  Nietz- 
sche, on  the  contrary,  with  his  contempt  for 
the  morality  of  Christianity  as  the  morality 
of  slaves  and  weaklings,  with  his  eulogy  of  the 
blond  brute  striding  over  forgotten  multitudes 
of  his  weaker  fellows  to  a  stultifying  isolation 


54      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

apart — Nietzsche  is  self-realization  in  the 
mad-house.  It  has  always  seemed  to  me  not 
without  significance  that  his  own  life  ended 
there. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  Tolstoy  responded 
to  an  inquirer  that,  if  he  saw  a  child  being  at- 
tacked by  a  brutal  ruffian,  he  would  not  use 
force  to  intervene  and  protect  the  child: 
that,  too,  is  non-resistance  fit  for  the  insane 
asylum.  One  of  these  is  just  as  far  from  sane, 
balanced  human  morality  as  the  other. 

It  is  a  terrible  thing  to  suffer  injustice;  it 
is  far  worse  to  perpetrate  it.  If  one  had  to 
choose  between  being  victim  or  tyrant,  one 
would  always  choose  to  be  victim:  it  is  safer 
for  the  moral  life  and  there  is  more  recovery 
afterward.  If,  however,  it  is  better  to  sufifer 
injustice  than  to  perpetrate  it,  better  than 
either  is  to  resist  it,  fight  it  and,  if  possible, 
overthrow  it. 

It  has  been  said  so  many  times  by  extreme 
pacifists  that  even  sane  human  beings  some- 
times take  it  for  granted,  that  "force  never  ac- 
complished anything  permanent  in  human  his- 
tory." It  is  false,  and  the  reasoning  by  which 
it  is  supported  involves  the  most  sophistical  of 


THEORY  OF  NON-RESISTANCE    55 

fallacies.  All  depends  on  who  uses  the  force 
and  the  purpose  for  which  it  is  used.  The 
force  employed  by  tyranny  and  injustice  ac- 
complishes nothing  permanent  in  history. 
Why?  Because  tyranny  and  injustice  are  in 
their  very  nature  transient,  they  are  opposed 
to  the  moral  order  of  the  universe  and,  in  the 
end,  must  pass.  On  the  other  hand,  the  force 
employed  on  the  part  of  liberty  and  justice  has 
attained  most  of  the  ends  of  civilization  we 
cherish  to-day.  The  force  of  the  million  of 
mercenaries,  collected  through  Asia  and 
Africa  by  Darius  and  Xerxes,  to  overwhelm 
a  few  Greek  cities,  accomplished  nothing  per- 
manent in  history;  but  the  force  of  the  ten 
thousand  Athenians  who  fought  at  Marathon 
and  of  the  other  thousands  at  Salamis,  saved 
democracy  for  Europe  and  made  possible  the 
civilization  of  the  Occident.  The  force  em- 
ployed by  King  Louis  of  France  to  support  a 
tottering  throne  and  continue  the  exploitation 
of  the  people  by  an  idle  and  selfish  aristocratic 
caste,  accomplished  nothing  permanent  in  his- 
tory; but  the  force  of  those  Frenchmen  who 
marched  upon  Paris,  singing  the  Marseillaise, 
made  possible  the  freedom  and  culture  of  the 


56      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

last  hundred  years.  The  force  employed  by 
King  George  of  England,  to  wring  taxes  with- 
out representation  from  reluctant  colonies,  ac- 
complished nothing  permanent  in  history,  but 
the  force  which,  at  Bunker  Hill  and  Concord 
Bridge,  "fired  the  shot  heard  round  the 
world,"  achieved  the  liberty  and  democracy 
of  the  American  continent. 

It  may  be  freely  admitted  that  all  use  of 
force  is  a  confession  of  failure  to  find  a  bet- 
ter way.  If  you  use  force  in  the  education 
of  a  child,  it  is  such  a  confession  of  failure. 
So  is  it  if  force  is  used  in  controlling  defec- 
tives and  criminals,  or  in  adjusting  the  rela- 
tions of  the  nations;  but  note  that  the  failure 
may  be  one  for  which  the  individual  parent, 
teacher,  society,  state  or  nation  is  in  no  degree 
responsible.  Force  is  a  tragic  weapon — and 
the  ultimate  one. 


IX 

PREPAREDNESS  FOR  SELF- 
DEFENSE 

Since  force  is  still  the  weapon  of  interna- 
tional justice,  readiness  and  willingness  to  use 
it  for  defense,  when  necessary,  is  then  the  first 
condition  of  fulfilling  the  aims  and  serving 
the  causes  for  which  America  stands.  In 
other  words,  since  the  relations  of  the  nations 
are  still  so  largely  those  of  individuals  under 
the  conditions  of  frontier  life,  as  with  the  hon- 
est man  on  the  frontier,  so  for  the  self-respect- 
ing, peace-loving  nation  to-day,  it  is  well  to 
carry  a  gun  and  know  how  to  shoot. 

Carrying  a  gun  is  a  dangerous  practice,  for 
two  reasons:  it  may  go  off  in  your  pocket;  you 
may  get  drunk  and  shoot  when  you  ought  not. 
Those  are  the  only  two  rational  arguments 
against  national  preparation  for  defense,  in 
the  present  state  of  the  world.  Let  us  see. 
The  gun  may  go  off  in  your  pocket:  that  is,  if 

57 


58      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

a  strong  armament  for  defense  is  built  up, 
there  is  always  danger  that  it  may  be  used  in- 
ternally, against  the  people,  unjustly.  That, 
indeed,  has  been  one  of  the  curses  of  Europe 
for  a  thousand  years.  It  is  a  grave  danger, 
but  recognizing  it  is  partly  forestalling  it; 
moreover,  we  would  better  face  that  danger 
than  one  far  worse.  So  with  the  other  men- 
ace: you  may  get  drunk  and  shoot  when  you 
ought  not.  Nations  get  drunk :  they  get  drunk 
with  pride,  arrogance,  aggressive  ambition, 
revenge,  even  with  panic  terror,  and  so  shoot 
when  they  should  not.  This,  also,  is  a  grave 
danger;  but  here,  as  well,  recognizing  it  is 
part  way  forestalling  it,  and  this  danger,  too, 
we  would  better  face  than  one  far  more  ter- 
rible. Moreover,  it  is  armament  for  the  grati- 
fication of  aggressive  ambition,  and  under  the 
control  of  the  arbitrary  authority  of  a  despotic 
individual  or  group,  that  tends  to  initiate  war, 
not  armament  solely  to  defend  the  liberties  of 
a  people. 

Thus,  under  the  conditions  cited,  it  is  well 
to  be  armed  and  prepared.  If  a  wolf  is  at 
large,  if  a  mad  dog  is  loose,  if  a  madman  is 
abroad  with  an  ax,  it  is  the  part  of  wisdom  to 


PREPAREDNESS  59 

have  an  adequate  weapon  and  be  prepared  to 
use  it.  If  the  Athenians  had  not  resisted  the 
hordes  of  Asia,  what  would  have  been  the  his- 
tory of  Europe?  If  the  French  had  not  re- 
sisted tyranny  and  injustice  in  the  Revolution, 
what  would  have  been  the  civilization  of  the 
last  hundred  years?  If  the  English  colonists 
had  not  resisted  taxation  without  representa- 
tion, what  would  be  the  present  status  of 
America?  If  the  artisan  groups  had  not 
united  and  fought  economic  exploitation,  what 
would  be  their  life  to-day?  If  Belgium  had 
not  resisted  Germany,  what  would  be  the  fu- 
ture of  democracy  in  Europe?  Thus,  now 
and  after  the  War,  the  need  is  for  all  necessary 
armament  for  self-respecting  self-defense  and 
not  an  atom  to  gratify  aggressive  ambition. 
This  does  not  mean  that,  once  involved  in  war, 
the  military  tactics  of  democracy  should  be 
merely  defensive.  As  has  often  and  wisely 
been  said,  in  war  the  best  defense  is  a  swift 
and  hard  attack. 

It  is  widely  argued,  however,  since  our  aim 
is  peace  and  a  world-court  of  justice  to  settle 
the  disputes  among  the  nations,  making  gen- 
eral   disarmament   possible,    should   not   one 


6o      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

great  nation,  fortunately  free  from  the  quar- 
rels of  Europe,  occupying  the  major  portion 
of  a  continent,  its  shores  washed  by  two  great 
oceans,  with  peaceful  friendship  on  the  north 
and  weak  anarchy  on  the  south — should  not 
such  a  nation  take  the  lead,  disarm  and  set  an 
example  to  mankind?  It  is  a  beautiful  dream ! 
Would  that  those  who  really  believe  in  non- 
resistance  to  evil  would  be  logical,  and  apply 
it  to  internal  as  well  as  external  policy.  What 
is  a  police  force?  It  is  a  body  of  men,  trained, 
employed  and  paid  to  use  force  in  resisting 
evil.  If  you  wish  to  try  out  non-resistance, 
why  not  let  some  city  apply  it?  Let  Chicago 
do  it:  abolish  its  police  force  and  set  the  ex- 
ample to  the  rest  of  the  benighted  cities  of  the 
country.  What  would  happen?  As  long  as 
there  are  criminals  in  all  cities  of  the  land, 
how  they  would  flock  to  that  fat  pasturage. 
What  devastation  of  property,  destruction  of 
life,  injury  to  innocent  women  and  children! 
Until  the  best  men  of  Chicago  would  get 
together,  form  a  vigilance  committee,  shoot 
some  of  the  criminals,  hang  others,  drive  the 
rest  out;  and  Chicago  would  get  back  to  law 
and  order,  with  courts  of  justice  and  a  regular 


PREPAREDNESS  6i 

police  body,  composed  of  men  trained,  em- 
ployed and  paid  to  use  force  in  resisting  evil. 

The  example  of  Canada  and  the  United 
States  is  cited,  and  a  noble  example  it  is:  three 
thousand  and  more  miles  of  international 
boundary,  with  never  a  shining  gun  or  brist- 
ling fortress  on  the  entire  frontier.  A  glorious 
example,  prophetic  of  what  is  coming  all  over 
the  world,  perhaps  more  quickly  than  we  dare 
hope  to-day;  but  what  made  it  possible? 
Agreement  in  advance,  and  that  at  a  time 
when  one  of  the  parties  was  too  weak  to  be 
feared.  Canada  is  getting  strong:  she  has  at 
present  four  hundred  thousand  trained  men 
at  the  front  or  ready  to  go.  Before  the  War 
closes  she  will  have  over  a  half  million.  Now 
suppose  Canada  fortified:  we  would  be  com- 
pelled to,  there  would  be  no  other  way. 

Thus  one  nation  cannot  disarm  while  the 
others  are  strongly  armed,  and  among  them 
are  those  whose  autocratic  rulers  and  imper- 
ialistic castes  are  watching  for  signs  of  weak- 
ness in  order  to  perpetrate  international  claim- 
jumping. 

It  is  true  that,  on  the  frontier,  in  the  early 
days,  there  were  individuals  who  went  about 


62      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

unarmed  among  the  gun  men,  did  it  success- 
fully, and  some  of  them  died  peacefully  in 
their  beds:  Christian  ministers — sky-pilots, 
they  were  called.  Please  note,  however,  that 
the  sky-pilot  never  had  any  money.  He  had 
no  claims  to  be  jumped. 

We  are  not  sky-pilots — far  from  it.  As  to 
money:  the  wealth  of  the  world  has  been  flow- 
ing into  our  coffers  in  a  golden  stream,  to  the 
embarrassment  of  our  financial  institutions,  to 
the  exaltation  of  the  cost  of  living  to  such  a 
point  that,  with  more  money  than  we  ever 
dreamed  of  having,  we  find  it  more  difficult  to 
buy  enough  to  eat  and  wear.  As  for  claims  to 
be  jumped:  they  are  on  every  hand:  Panama 
Canal,  Hawaiian  Islands,  Philippine  Islands, 
ports  of  New  York  and  San  Francisco,  vast 
reaches  of  unprotected  coast.  No,  we  are  not 
sky-pilots,  we  cannot  claim  exemption  on  that 
ground. 

Suppose,  after  the  War,  we  attempted  to 
disarm,  without  the  protection  of  a  world 
court  and  international  police,  while  the  other 
nations  retained  war  armament.  They,  the 
victors  and  perhaps  the  defeated,  would  pos- 
sess a  great  army  and  navy,  manned  with  sea- 


PREPAREDNESS  63 

soned  veterans,  and  be  burdened  with  an  in- 
tolerable debt;  for  the  War  has  gone  too  far 
for  any  one  to  be  able  to  pay  adequate  indem- 
nity. We,  rich,  young,  heedless,  sure  that  no 
one  on  earth  could  ever  whip  us,  chiefly  be- 
cause no  one  wor.th  while  has  ever  seriously 
tried:  suppose  we  were  completely  disarmed. 
It  would  require  only  a  little  meddling  with 
Mexico  or  Brazil,  and  we  should  have  to  give 
up  the  Monroe  Doctrine  or  fight.  Well,  per- 
haps we  shall  give  it  up:  it  has  even  been  sug- 
gested in  the  halls  of  Congress  that  we  should 
— to  the  shame  of  the  suggester,  be  it  said. 
People  do  not  understand  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine: they  talk  of  it  as  if  it  were  a  law.  It  is 
in  no  sense  a  law,  but  is  merely  a  rather  arro- 
gant expression  of  our  desires.  We  said  to  the 
other  nations:  ''We  desire  that  none  of  you 
henceforth  shall  fence  in  any  part  of  our  front 
or  back  yard,  or  the  front  or  back  yard  of  any 
of  our  neighbors,  dwelling  on  the  North  and 
South  American  continents."  That  is  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  and  that  is  all  that  it  is:  an 
expression  of  our  wishes.  All  very  well  if 
others  choose  to  respect  them,  but  suppose 
some  one  does  not?     Perhaps,  as  stated,  we 


64      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

may  abandon  the  Monroe  Doctrine:  that  is 
the  easiest  way,  and  the  easiest  way,  for  a  na- 
tion or  an  individual,  is  usually  the  way  of 
damnation.  Even  so,  suppose  the  nation  in 
question  to  say,  "My  national  aspirations  de- 
mand the  Panama  Canal,  the  Philippine 
Islands,  or  Long  Island  and  the  Port  of  New 
York."  Why  not?  The  Atlantic  Ocean  is 
only  a  mill-pond.  It  is  not  half  so  wide  as 
Lake  Erie  was  fifty  years  ago,  in  relation  to 
modern  means  of  transportation  and  commu- 
nication. People  say,  "Do  we  want  to  give  up 
our  traditional  isolation?"  They  are  too  late 
in  asking  the  question:  that  isolation  is  irre- 
coverably gone.  That  should  be  now  evident 
even  to  people  dwelling  in  fatuously  fancied 
security  between  the  Alleghenies  and  the 
Rockies.  We  are  inevitably  drawn  into  re- 
lation with  the  rest  of  mankind.  The  question 
is  no  longer,  "Shall  we  take  a  part  in  world 
problems?",  but  "What  part  shall  we  take?" 
The  point  is,  that  if,  under  the  circum- 
stances cited,  any  one  wished  to  do  so,  we 
could  quickly  be  driven  to  such  a  condition 
of  abject  humiliation  that  we  should  be  com- 


PREPAREDNESS  65 

pelled  to  fight.  Now  suppose,  disarmed,  we 
should  enter  the  conflict  utterly  unprepared? 
The  result  would  be,  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  young  men,  going  out  bravely  in  obedience 
to  an  ideal — untrained  and  half  equipped — 
to  be  butchered,  a  humiliating  peace,  and  an 
indemnity  of  many  billions  to  be  groaned  un- 
der for  fifty  years. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  we  were  adequately 
armed  for  defense,  there  would  be  much  less 
temptation  to  any  one  to  trouble  us;  and  if  we 
were  compelled  to  fight,  would  it  not  be  bet- 
ter to  fight  reasonably  prepared? 

There  is  a  story,  going  the  rounds  of  the 
press,  about  the  bandit,  Jesse  James:  telling 
how,  on  one  occasion,  he  went  to  a  lonely  farm 
house  to  commandeer  a  meal.  Entering,  he 
found  one  woman,  a  widow,  alone  and  weep- 
ing bitterly.  He  asked  her  what  was  the  mat- 
ter, and  she  replied  that,  in  one  hour,  the 
landlord  was  coming,  and  if  she  did  not  have 
her  mortgage  money,  she  would  lose  her  little 
farm  and  home  and  be  out  in  the  world,  shel- 
terless. The  heart  of  the  bandit  was  touched. 
He  gave  her  the  money  to  pay  off  the  mort- 


66      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

gage,  hid  in  the  brush  and  held  up  the  land- 
lord on  the  way  back. 

Need  the  moral  be  pointed?  We  have  been 
getting  the  mortgage  money.  During  the  first 
years  of  the  War  it  rolled  in,  an  ever-increas- 
ing golden  stream,  until  we  held  a  mortgage 
on  numerous  European  nations.  We  have  the 
mortgage  money,  but  beware  of  the  way  back! 

Thus  the  agitation,  in  one  nation,  for  dis- 
armament, unpreparedness  and  a  patched  up 
peace,  while  the  other  nations  are  armed  and 
embittered,  not  only  renders  the  situation  of 
the  one  people  critically  perilous,  but  actually 
cripples  its  power  to  serv^  the  cause  of  world 
peace  and  humanity.  If  only  the  peace-at- 
any-price  people  had  to  pay  the  price,  one 
would  be  willing  to  wait  and  see  what  hap- 
pened; but  they  never  pay  it,  they  take  to 
cover.  It  is  those  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
splendid  young  men,  going  out  blithely  in 
obedience  to  duty,  to  be  butchered,  it  is  the 
millions  of  women  and  children,  who  cannot 
escape  from  a  devastated  area,  who  pay  that 
price. 

Every  people  in  the  past  that  turned  to 
money  and  mercenaries  for  defense  has  gone 


PREPAREDNESS  67 

down.  No  people  ever  survived  that  was  un- 
able and  unwilling  to  fight  for  its  liberties  and 
spend,  if  necessary,  the  last  drop  of  its  blood 
for  the  principles  it  bf Sieved. 


X 


RECONSTRUCTION  FROM  THE 
WAR 

We  have  seen  how  impossible  it  is  to  fore- 
cast the  new  world  that  will  follow  the  War, 
we  know  merely  that  it  will  be  utterly  new. 
Nevertheless,  the  great  tendencies  already  at 
work  we  can  partly  discern  and  recognize 
something  of  what  they  promise.  It  is  well 
to  try  to  see  them,  that  we  may  be  not  too  un- 
ready to  welcome  the  opportunity  and  accept 
the  burden  of  the  world  that  is  being  born  in 
pain. 

Peace  and  prosperity  produce  a  peculiar 
type  of  conservatism.  People  are  then  rela- 
tively free  in  action  and  expression,  things 
are  going  well  with  them,  and  they  are  in- 
stinctively inclined  to  let  well  enough  alone. 
Thus  in  thought  they  tend  to  a  conservative 
inertia. 

On   the   other  hand,   in   periods   of   great 

68 


RECONSTRUCTION  69 

strain  and  suffering,  as  in  war  time,  thought 
is  stimulated,  all  ordinary  views  are  broken 
down  and  the  most  radical  notions  are  widely 
disseminated  and  even  taken  for  granted  by 
those  who,  shortly  before,  would  have  been 
scandalized  by  them.  Action  and  certain 
phases  of  free  speech  are,  in  such  a  period, 
much  more  widely  restrained  by  authority. 
There  is  a  swift  and  strong  development  of 
social  control,  urged  by  necessity. 

Thus,  in  war  time,  there  is  the  curious  para- 
dox of  ever  widening  radicalism  in  thought, 
with  constantly  decreasing  freedom  in  action 
and  expression.  When  the  discrepancy  be- 
comes too  great,  you  have  the  explosion — 
Revolution.  This  cause  hastened  and  made 
more  extreme  the  Russian  Revolution,  which 
had  been  simmering  for  a  century.  It  has  not 
yet  appeared  in  Germany  because  of  the  forty 
years  of  successful  work  in  drilling  the  mind 
of  the  German  people  to  march  in  goose-step; 
yet  the  increasing  signs  of  questioning  the  in- 
fallibility of  the  existing  regime  and  system 
in  Germany  give  evidence  that  there,  too,  the 
conflict  is  at  work. 

With  ourselves,  the  opposition  appears,  as 


70      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

yet,  only  in  minor  degree.  Nevertheless,  it  is 
here.  On  the  one  hand,  are  the  registration, 
conscription  and  espionage  measures,  the  ef- 
fort to  control  news,  the  governmental  super- 
vision of  food  supplies,  transportation,  pro- 
duction and  corporation  earnings,  the  war 
taxes.  On  the  other  hand,  thought  is  so  stimu- 
lated that  everything  is  questioned:  our  poli- 
tical system,  our  social  institutions — marriage, 
the  family,  education.  As  some  one  says, 
"Nothing  is  radical  now."  We  probably  shall 
escape  a  sudden  revolution,  but  the  conflict 
must  produce  profound  readjustment  in  every 
aspect  of  our  life;  for  thought  and  action  must 
come  measurably  together,  since  they  are  re- 
lated as  soul  and  body. 

There  are  singular  eddies  in  the  main  cur- 
rent both  ways.  For  instance,  the  exigencies 
and  sufferings  of  war  produce  a  reaction  to- 
ward narrower,  orthodox  forms  of  religion 
and  a  harsher  spirit  of  nationalism;  while  in 
fields  of  action  apart  from  the  struggle,  free- 
dom and  even  license  may  increase,  as  in  sex- 
relations.  Nevertheless  these  cross-currents, 
while  they  may  obscure,  do  not  alter  the  main 


RECONSTRUCTION  71 

tendencies,  which  move  swiftly  and  increas- 
ingly toward  the  essential  conflict. 

Even  before  our  actual  entrance  into  the 
War,  its  profound  influence  upon  both  our 
thinking  and  our  conduct  and  institutions  was 
evident.  Now  that  we  are  in  the  conflict  that 
influence  is  multiplied.  We  are  aroused  to 
new  seriousness  of  thought.  The  frivolity  and 
selfish  pleasure-seeking  that  have  marked  our 
life  for  recent  decades  are  decreasing.  We 
may  reasonably  hope  that  the  literature  of  su- 
perficial cleverness  and  smart  cynicism,  which 
has  been  in  vogue  for  the  last  period,  will  have 
had  its  day,  that  the  perpetrators  of  such  lit- 
erature will  be,  measurably  speaking,  without 
audience  at  the  conclusion  of  the  War. 

The  philosophy  of  complacency,  at  least, 
will  be  at  an  end,  and  the  world  will  face  with 
new  earnestness  the  problem  of  life.  This 
generation  will  be  tired,  perhaps  exhausted, 
by  the  titanic  struggle;  but  youth  comes  on, 
fresh  and  eager,  with  exhaustless  vital  energy, 
and  the  generations  to  come  will  take  the  her- 
itage and  work  out  the  new  philosophy.  As 
Nature  quickly  and  quietly  covers  the  worst 
scars  we  make  in  her  breast,  so  Man  has  a 


72      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

power  of  recovery,  beyond  all  that  we  could 
dream.  It  is  to  that  we  must  look,  across  the 
time  of  demoniac  destruction. 

We  may  even  dare  to  hope  that  the  next 
half-century  will  see  a  great  development  of 
noble  literature  in  our  own  land.  War  for 
liberty,  justice  and  humanity  always  tends  to 
create  such  a  productive  period  in  literature 
and  the  other  fine  arts.  The  struggle  with 
Persia  was  behind  the  Periclean  age  in 
Athens.  It  was  the  conflict  of  England  with 
the  overshadowing  might  of  Spain  that  so  vi- 
talized the  Elizabethan  period.  The  Revolu- 
tion was  behind  the  one  important  school  of 
literature  our  own  country  has  produced  hith- 
erto. 

Since  this  War  is  waged  on  a  scale  far  more 
colossal  than  any  other  in  human  history,  and 
since  liberty  and  democracy  are  at  stake,  not 
only  in  one  land,  but  throughout  the  world 
and  for  the  entire  future  of  humanity,  it  is 
reasonable  to  expect  that  the  stimulation  to  the 
creation  of  art  and  literature  will  be  far 
greater  than  that  following  any  previous 
struggle.  Where  the  sacrifice  for  high  aims 
has  been  greatest,  the  inspiration  should  be 


RECONSTRUCTION  73 

greatest,  as  in  France.  The  literature  cur- 
rently produced,  as  in  the  books  of  Loti,  Mae- 
terlinck and  Rolland,  is  scrappy  and  disap- 
pointing, it  is  true;  but  that  is  to  be  expected 
when  the  whole  nation  is  strained  to  its  last 
energy  and  gasping  for  breath,  under  the  ti- 
tanic struggle,  and  is  no  test  of  what  will  be. 
In  spite  of  the  destruction  of  so  large  a  frac- 
tion of  her  manhood,  France  will  surely  rise 
from  the  ashes  of  this  world  conflagration  re- 
generated and  reinspired.  The  pessimism  of 
her  late  decades  will  be  gone.  The  literature 
and  other  art  she  will  produce  will  be  instinct 
with  new  earnestness  and  exalted  vision,  and 
she  may  excel  even  her  own  great  past. 

We  too  are  awakening.  Since  the  War  be- 
gan, all  over  the  United  States,  men  and 
women  have  been  thinking  more  earnestly  and 
have  been  more  willing  to  listen  to  the  expres- 
sion of  serious  thought  than  ever  before  for 
the  last  quarter  century.  Now  that  the  hour 
of  sacrifice  has  struck,  this  earnestness  must 
greatly  deepen.  Perhaps  we,  too,  may  have 
our  golden  age  of  art. 

The  same  inspiration  carries  naturally  into 
the  religious  life.    It  is  true,  as  we  have  seen. 


74      THE  SOUL'  OF  DEMOCRACY 

that  there  is  a  cross-current  of  reversion  to 
narrower  orthodoxy,  caused  by  the  War.  The 
Gods  of  War  are  all  national  and  tribal  divini- 
ties. While  they  rule,  the  face  of  the  God  of 
Humanity  is  veiled.  The  Kaiser's  possessive 
attitude  toward  the  Divine  is  but  the  extreme 
case  of  what  War  does  to  the  religious  life. 
Even  among  ourselves  the  tendency  shows  in 
such  phenomena  as  the  current  popular  evan- 
gelism— an  eloquent,  if  artfully  calculated 
and  vulgarized  preaching  of  the  purely  per- 
sonal virtues,  with  an  ignorance  that  there  is  a 
social  problem  in  modern  civilization,  pro- 
found as  that  displayed  by  a  mediaeval 
churchman.  The  evangelist's  list  of  inmates, 
whom  he  relegates  to  the  kingdom  of  the  lost, 
makes  the  place  singularly  attractive  to  the 
lover  of  good  intellectual  society. 

Nevertheless,  the  reversion  to  narrower 
creeds  but  indicates  the  newly  awakened  hun- 
ger of  the  religious  life.  Men  who  sacrifice 
live  with  graver  earnestness  than  those  who 
are  carelessly  prosperous.  Cynicism  and  pes- 
simism are  children  of  idleness  and  frivolity, 
never  of  heroic  sacrifice  and  nobly  accepted 
pain.    These  latter  foster  faith  in  life  and  its 


RECONSTRUCTION  75 

infinite  and  eternal  meaning.  Thus,  with  all 
the  tragic  submerging  of  our  spiritual  herit- 
age the  War  involves,  we  may  hope  that  it  will 
cause  a  revival,  not  of  emotional  hysteria,  but 
of  deepened  faith  in  the  spirit,  in  the  supreme 
worth  of  life,  until  at  last  we  may  see  the  dawn 
of  the  religion  of  humanity. 


XI 

THE  WAR  AND  EDUCATION 

Equally  far-reaching  are  the  changes  the 
War  must  produce  in  our  education.  Tempo- 
rarily, our  higher  institutions  will  be  crippled 
by  the  drawing  off  of  the  youth  of  the  land 
for  war.  This  is  one  of  the  unfortunate  sac- 
rifices such  a  struggle  involves.  We  must  see 
to  it  that  it  is  not  carried  too  far.  One  still 
hears  old  men  in  the  South  pathetically  say, 
"I  missed  my  education  because  of  the  Civil 
War."  Let  us  strive  to  keep  open  our  educa- 
tional institutions  and  continue  all  our  cul- 
tural activities,  in  spite  of  the  drain  and  strain 
of  the  War.  For  never  was  intellectual  guid- 
ance and  leadership  more  needed  than  in  the 
present  crisis. 

The  paramount  effect  of  the  War  on  educa- 
tion is,  however,  in  the  multiplied  demand 
for  efficiency.  This  is  the  cry  all  across  the 
country  to-day,  and,  in  the  main,  it  is  just. 
Our  education  has  been  too  academic,   too 

76 


THE  WAR  AND  EDUCATION    ^-j 

much  molded  by  tradition.  It  must  be  more 
closely  related  to  life  and  to  the  changed  con- 
ditions of  industry  and  commerce.  Each  boy 
and  girl,  youth  and  maiden,  must  leave  the 
school  able  to  take  hold  somewhere  and  make 
a  significant  contribution  to  the  society  of 
which  he  or  she  is  an  integral  part.  Voca- 
tional training  must  be  greatly  increased.  The 
problems  of  the  school  must  be  increasingly 
practical  problems,  and  thought  and  judg- 
ment must  be  trained  to  the  solution  of  those 
problems.  This  is  all  a  part  of  that  socializa- 
tion of  democracy  which  must  be  achieved  if 
democracy  is  to  survive  in  the  new  world  fol- 
lowing the  War. 

There  is,  nevertheless,  an  element  of  emo- 
tional hysteria  in  the  demand  for  efficiency 
and  only  efficiency.  Efficiency  is  too  narrow  a 
standard  by  which  to  estimate  anything  con- 
cerning human  conduct  and  character.  In 
the  effort  to  meet  and  conquer  Germany,  let 
us  beware  of  the  mistake  of  Germany.  One 
of  the  world  tragedies  of  this  epoch  is  the  way 
in  which  Germany  has  sacrificed  her  spiritual 
heritage,  first  for  economic,  then  for  purely 
military    efficiency.      When    we    recall    that 


78      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

spiritual  heritage,  as  previously  described, 
when  we  think  of  Schiller,  Herder  and  Goe- 
the, Froebel,  Herbart  and  Richter,  Tauler, 
Luther  and  Schleiermacher,  Kant,  Fichte  and 
Schopenhauer,  Mozart,  Beethoven  and  Wag- 
ner, we  stand  aghast  at  the  way  in  which  she 
has  plunged  it  all  into  the  abyss, — for  what? 
Shall  it  profit  a  people,  more  than  a  man,  if 
it  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  its  own  soul? 
In  such  a  time,  then,  all  of  us  who  believe 
in  the  spirit  must  hold  high  the  torch  of  hu- 
manistic culture.  Education  is  for  life  and 
not  merely  for  efficiency.  Of  what  worth  is 
life,  if  one  is  only  a  cog-wheel  in  the  economic 
machine?  It  is  to  save  the  spiritual  heritage 
of  humanity  that  we  are  fighting,  and  it  is  that 
heritage  that  education  must  bring  to  every 
child  and  youth,  if  it  fulfills  its  supreme  trust. 
Education  for  the  purposes  of  autocratic  im- 
perialism seeks  to  make  a  people  a  perfect 
economically  productive  and  militarily  ag- 
gressive machine.  Education  for  democracy 
means  the  development  of  each  individual  to 
the  most  intelligent,  self-directed  and  gov- 
erned, unselfish  and  devoted,  sane,  balanced 
and  effective  humanity. 


XII 
SOCIALISM  AND  THE  WAR 

One  of  the  surprises  of  the  War  was  the 
complete  breakdown  of  international  social- 
ism. Not  only  socialists,  but  those  of  us  who 
had  been  thoughtfully  watching  the  move- 
ment from  without,  had  come  to  believe  that 
the  measure  of  consciousness  of  international 
brotherhood  it  had  developed  in  the  artisan 
groups  of  many  lands,  would  be  a  powerful 
lever  against  war.  We  were  wrong:  the  su- 
perficial international  sympathy  evaporated 
like  mist  under  the  rays  of  a  revived  nation- 
alism. The  socialists  fell  in  line,  almost  as 
completely  as  any  other  group,  with  the  purely 
nationalist  aims  in  each  land. 

This  must  have  gratified  certain  despots; 
for  one  cause  of  the  War,  not  the  cause,  was 
undoubtedly  the  preference  on  the  part  of  va- 
rious autocrats,  to  face  an  external  war  rather 
than  the  rising  tide  of  democracy  within  the 

79 


8o      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

nation.  Temporarily,  they  have  been  success- 
ful, but  surely  only  for  a  brief  time.  The  vic- 
tory of  democracy  will  vastly  accelerate  the 
growth  of  the  spirit  of  brotherhood  through- 
out the  world. 

The  terrible  waste  of  the  War  must  of  it- 
self produce  a  reaction  of  the  people  on  kings 
and  castes  in  all  lands.  The  suffering  that 
will  follow  the  War,  in  the  period  of  economic 
readjustment,  will  accentuate  this.  Surely  the 
people,  in  England,  France,  America,  Italy, 
Russia,  and  among  the  neutral  nations,  will 
strive  that  no  such  war  may  come  again.  Even 
in  Germany,  when  the  people  find  out  what 
they  have  paid  and  why,  inevitably  they  must 
struggle  so  to  reform  their  institutions  that 
no  ruler  or  class  may  again  plunge  them  into 
such  disaster  for  the  selfish  benefit  or  am- 
bitions of  that  ruler  or  class.  How  our  hearts 
have  warmed  to  Liebknecht! 

The  realignment  of  nations  must  work  to 
the  same  end.  War,  like  politics,  makes 
strange  bed-fellows.  Germany  and  Austria, 
for  centuries  rivals,  and,  at  times,  enemies,  we 
behold  united  so  completely  that  it  is  difficult 
to  imagine  them  disentangled  after  the  War. 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  WAR      8i 

France  and  England,  long  regarding  each 
other  as  natural  enemies,  are  fused  heart  and 
soul.  Strangest  of  all,  we  have  seen  England 
struggling  to  win  for  Russia  that  prize  of  Con- 
stantinople, which  for  generations  it  has  been 
a  main  object  of  British  diplomacy  to  keep 
from  Russian  grasp.  Most  impressive  of  all, 
has  been  the  new  consciousness  of  unity  and 
common  cause  among  the  nations  of  the  earth, 
and  the  groups  within  all  nations,  standing 
for  democracy. 

Thus  the  tide,  checked  for  a  time,  will  in- 
evitably break  forth  with  renewed  force.  It 
is  probable  that  the  next  fifty  years  will  be  a 
period  of  great  change — even  of  revolutions, 
peaceful  or  otherwise,  throughout  the  earth. 

To  understand  the  effect  on  the  whole  so- 
cialist movement,  one  must  distinguish  clearly 
the  two  contrasting  types  of  socialism.  It  is 
the  curse  of  the  orthodox,  or  Marxian,  type  of 
socialism,  that  it  was  "made  in  Germany."  Its 
economic  state  is  modeled  directly  on  the 
Prussian  bureaucratic  and  paternalistic  state. 
Its  dream  realized,  would  mean  Prussian  effi- 
ciency carried  to  the  nth  power,  in  a  society 
of    as    merciless    slavery   as    that   prevailing 


82      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

among  the  ants  and  the  bees.  It  is  doubtless 
this  characteristic  that  has  made  so  many  bu- 
reaucratic or  orthodox  socialists  instinctively 
Pro-German  in  sentiment  and  sympathy  dur- 
ing the  War. 

The  contrasting  type  of  socialism  is  that 
which  is  really  the  full  development  of  de- 
mocracy, its  movement  from  a  narrow  individ- 
ualism to  ever  wider  voluntary  co-operation. 
It  moves,  not  toward  government  ownership, 
but  toward  ownership  by  the  people,  of  natu- 
ral monopolies.  It  means,  not  the  turning  over 
to  a  bureaucratic  government,  of  plants  and 
instruments  of  production,  but  the  progres- 
sive cooperative  ownership  of  them  by  the 
workers  themselves.  It  will  end,  not  in  the 
overthrow  of  the  capitalist  regime,  but  in  all 
workers  becoming  co-operative  capitalists, 
and  all  capitalists,  productive  workers,  since 
no  idle  rich — or  poor,  will  be  tolerated.  Such 
socialism,  if  it  be  so  called,  will  depend  upon 
the  highest  individual  initiative,  the  most  vol- 
untary co-operation  and  will  include  the  indi- 
vidualism which  is  the  cherished  boon  of 
democracy.  It  is  significant  that  those  who 
represent  this  type  of  socialism  and  who  think 


SOCIALISM  AND  THE  WAR      83 

for  themselves,  are  breaking  away  from  the 
orthodox  party,  under  the  courageous  lead- 
ership and  example  of  John  Spargo,  in  in- 
creasing numbers,  since  our  entrance  into  the 
War.  They  are  as  instinctively  American 
and  democratic  in  sympathy,  as  those  of  the 
opposite  type  are  Pro-German. 

Even  in  the  most  democratic  countries, 
however,  the  War  has  caused  a  vast  increase 
of  the  undesirable  type  of  socialism:  that  is 
one  of  its  temporary  penalties.  To  carry  on 
such  a  war  successfully,  it  is  necessary  to  mul- 
tiply the  authority  of  the  central  government. 
That  has  been  the  experience  of  England, 
now  being  repeated  here.  Men,  who  were 
citizens  of  a  democracy,  become,  as  soldiers, 
and  in  part  as  workers,  subjects  of  the  gov- 
ernment in  war.  To  some  extent  we  are 
forced  to  imitate  the  tendencies  we  deplore 
and  seek  to  overthrow  in  Germany,  to  be  able 
to  meet  and  defeat  Germany. 

Even  so,  the  difference  is  profound.  The 
subordination  to  the  government  is,  for  the 
people  as  a  whole,  voluntary,  achieved 
through  laws  passed  by  chosen  represen- 
tatives of  the  people,  and  not  by  the  arbitrary 


84      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

will  of  a  kaiser  and  ruling  caste.  Thus  the 
freedom,  voluntarily  relinquished  for  a  time, 
can  be  quickly  regained  when  the  crisis  is 
past.  Subjects  will  become  citizens  again, 
when  soldiers  return  to  civil  life. 

Nevertheless,  there  will  be  no  return  to  the 
old,  selfishly  individualistic  regime.  The  les- 
son of  organized  action  will  have  been 
learned,  and  a  vast  increase  of  voluntary  co- 
operation, that  is,  of  the  socialism  that  is  true 
democracy  may  be  anticipated  as  a  beneficent 
result  of  the  War.  This  will  be  one  of  the 
great  compensations  for  the  waste  of  our  heri- 
tage, spiritual  and  material,  through  the  War. 
The  voluntary  socialization  of  previously  in- 
dividualistic democracy  will  be  the  next  great 
forward  movement  of  the  human  spirit. 


XIII 

THE  WAR  AND  FEMINISM 

Of  all  consequences  of  the  War,  perhaps 
none  is  more  significant  than  its  effect  upon 
the  position  of  women.  Militarism  and  femi- 
nism are  counter  currents  in  the  tide  of  his- 
tory. All  recrudescence  of  brute  force  car- 
ries the  subjugation  of  women.  In  the  de- 
gree to  which  professional  militarism  prevails 
in  any  society,  women  are  forced  into  hard 
industrial  activities,  despised  because  fulfilled 
by  women.  On  the  other  hand,  a  group  of 
carefully  protected  women  is  held  apart  as  a 
fine  adornment  of  life.  Both  ways  militarism 
accentuates  the  property  idea  in  reference  to 
women:  the  one  type,  useful,  the  other,  adorn- 
ing, property.  The  one  shows  in  marriage  by 
purchase,  the  other  in  the  dowry  system.  It 
is  hard  to  say  which  is  more  dishonoring  to 
v/omen.  It  would,  perhaps,  seem  preferable 
and   less   offensive   to   be   bought   as   useful, 

85 


86      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

rather  than  accepted  with  a  money  payment, 
as  an  adorning  but  expensive  possession, 
where,  as  with  the  automobile,  "it  is  the  up- 
keep that  counts."  Surely,  however,  either 
attitude  is  degrading  enough. 

The  accentuation,  in  the  present  War,  of 
the  notion  of  women  as  property,  is  evident 
in  more  brutal  form  in  the  horrors  of  rape,  in 
the  deliberate  and  organized  use  of  women  as 
breeders,  with  the  same  efficiency  with  which 
Germany  breeds  her  swine. 

Nevertheless,  here,  too,  strong  counter  cur- 
rents are  at  work.  As  this  is  a  war  of  nations, 
not  of  armies,  it  is  the  whole  people  that,  in 
each  instance,  has  had  to  be  mobilized  and 
organized.  In  all  the  democracies  women 
have  voluntarily  risen  to  this  need,  just  as  cit- 
izens have  voluntarily  become  soldiers.  Thus 
women,  by  the  legion,  are  working  in  muni- 
tion factories,  on  the  farms,  in  productive 
plants  of  every  kind,  in  public  service  and 
commerce  organizations.  The  noble  way  in 
which  women  have  accepted  the  double  bur- 
den has  created  a  wave  of  reverent  admira- 
tion throughout  the  world.  Thus  where  pro- 
fessional militarism  tends  to  despise  the  in- 


THE  WAR  AND  FEMINISM      87 

dustrial  activities  into  which  it  forces  women, 
war  for  defense  and  justice  causes  reverence 
for  the  same  socially  necessary  activities  and 
for  the  women  who  so  courageously  under- 
take them  for  the  sake  of  all. 

Moreover,  the  increased  freedom  of  action 
for  women  will  outlast  its  temporary  cause. 
Once  so  admitted  to  new  fields  of  industrial, 
business  and  professional  activity,  women  can 
never  be  generally  excluded  from  them  again. 
Thus  when  the  soldiers  become  citizens,  many 
of  the  women  will  remain  producers,  work- 
ing beside  men  under  new  conditions  of 
equality. 

The  result,  with  the  general  stimulation  of 
radical  thinking  that  the  War  involves,  will 
be  a  profound  acceleration  of  the  feminist 
movement  throughout,  at  least,  the  democra- 
cies of  the  world.  Already  it  is  being  recog- 
nized that  all  valid  principles  of  democracy 
apply  to  women  equally  with  men.  Regene- 
rated, if  chaotic,  Russia  takes  for  granted  the 
farthest  reaches  of  feminism.  The  regime  in 
England,  that  bitterly  opposed  suffrage  for 
women,  is  now  voluntarily  granting  it  before 
the  close  of  the  War. 


88      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

Thus  the  victory  of  the  allied  nations  will 
mean  the  fruition  of  much  of  the  feminism 
that  is  a  phase  of  humanism.  It  will  mean 
freeing  women  from  outgrown  custom  and 
tradition,  from  unjust  limitations  in  indus- 
trial, social  and  political  life.  It  will  mean 
men  and  women  working  together,  on  a  plane 
of  moral  equality,  with  free  initiative  and  vol- 
untary co-operation,  for  the  fruition  of  de- 
mocracy. Just  as  that  fruition  will  see  the 
end  of  idle  rich  and  poor,  so  there  will  be  no 
more  women  slaves  or  parasites,  none  regard- 
ed or  possessed  as  property,  but  only  free  hu- 
man beings,  each  self-directed  and  self-con- 
trolled, and  responsible  for  his  or  her  own 
personality  and  conduct. 


•■-^-w.    L-ii^K/\BV 


XIV 

THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF 
DEMOCRACY 

The  nineteenth  century  was  the  period  of 
rapid  growth  in  adhesion  to  those  ideals  of 
democracy  for  which  the  War  is  being 
fought.  It  is  not  so  well  recognized  that  dur- 
ing the  same  hundred  years  democracy  was 
so  transformed  as  to  be  to-day  a  new  thing 
under  the  sun. 

Up  to  the  time  of  the  French  and  Ameri- 
can revolutions  democracy  rested  largely 
upon  certain  abstract  ideas  of  human  nature. 
Rousseau  could  argue  that  in  primitive  times 
men  sat  down  together  to  form  a  state,  each 
giving  up  a  part  of  his  natural  right  to  a  cen- 
tral authority,  and  thus  justifying  it.  We  now 
know  that  nothing  of  the  kind  ever  happened, 
that  society  had  undergone  a  long  process  of 
development  before  men  began  to  think  about 
it  at  all.    We  continue  to  repeat  the  splendid 

89 


90      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

phrases  of  the  Revolutionary  period,  but  we 
do  not  believe  them — not  as  our  ancestors  be- 
lieved them.  Instead  of  regarding  all  men  as 
born  free  and  equal,  we  recognize  that  free- 
dom is  the  end,  rather  than  the  beginning  of 
a  long  process  of  development,  while  we  see 
every  kind  of  inequality  among  men,  in 
health,  natural  gifts,  temperament  and  char- 
acter. It  may  be  said,  our  ancestors  did  not 
mean  that  all  men  were  born  really  free  and 
equal,  but  that  it  was  the  duty  of  a  just  state 
to  guarantee  them  entire  freedom  of  action 
and  equality  before  the  law  and  in  opportu- 
nity of  life.  Even  if  we  take  this  view,  which 
is  questionable,  how  far  short  we  have  fallen 
of  realizing  it,  as  yet,  in  our  institutions. 

The  point  is,  we  have  abandoned  the  ab- 
stract ideas  of  human  nature,  upon  which  de- 
mocracy previously  depended.  We  test  it  by 
its  results — not  merely  in  economic  efficiency 
and  prosperity,  but  by  its  results  in  manhood 
and  womanhood.  If  we  continue  to  believe 
in  democracy,  in  spite  of  its  waste,  cost  and 
vulgarity,  it  is  because  we  believe  that  only 
under  free  institutions  is  it  possible  to  develop 
the  most  intelligent,  earnest  and  worthy  type 


MODERN  DEMOCRACY         91 

of  manhood  and  womanhood.  Thus  we  view 
it  in  the  opposite  way  from  the  thinkers  who 
helped  bring  in  the  French  and  American 
revolutions,  testing  it  by  its  results  in  char- 
acter and  conduct. 

At  least  equally  important  is  the  extension 
of  the  area  over  which  we  apply  the  ideal  of 
democracy.  In  all  the  older  societies  called 
by  the  same  name,  the  rights  of  free  citizen- 
ship were  possessed  by  only  a  fraction  of  the 
population.  Ancient  Athens,  for  instance,  we 
call  a  democracy,  and  it  is  true  that,  in  the 
class  of  free  citizens,  democracy  reached  a 
more  extreme  form  than  in  any  modern  so- 
ciety. That  class,  however,  rested  on  the 
backs  of  a  multitude  of  slaves.  If  we  remem- 
ber that,  in  the  best  days  of  Athens,  for  every 
free  citizen  there  were  from  four  to  ten  slaves, 
not  of  alien  race  and  color,  but  often  of  the 
same  blood  with  their  masters  and,  at  times, 
better  educated — men  and  women  whom  the 
fortunes  of  war  had  reduced  to  their  abject 
condition — we  shall  see  how  far  removed 
Athens  was  from  a  democracy  in  our  modern 
sense. 

Of  the  free  citizens,  one  half  were  not  free 


92      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

at  all.  I  refer,  of  course,  to  the  women  of 
antiquity.  Where  respectable,  these  were  the 
head  of  the  household  slaves,  scarcely  re- 
moved from  the  condition  of  the  latter.  The 
few  women  who  did  achieve  freedom  of 
thought  and  action,  and  became  the  compan- 
ions of  cultivated  men — the  Aspasias  of  an- 
tiquity— bought  their  freedom  at  a  sad  price. 

So  Rome  is  called  a  republic,  and  it  is  true 
that,  during  the  first  half  of  her  long  history, 
freedom  gradually  broadened  down  from  the 
patrician  class  to  the  plebeian  multitude. 
When  Rome  reached  out,  however,  to  the 
mastery  of  the  most  impressive  empire  the 
world  has  seen,  she  never  dreamed  of  extend- 
ing that  freedom  to  the  conquered  popula- 
tions. If  she  did  grant  Roman  citizenship  to 
an  occasional  community,  to  enjoy  the  rights 
and  exercise  the  privileges  of  that  citizenship, 
it  was  necessary  to  journey  to  Rome.  It  was 
the  city  and  the  world:  the  city  ruling  the 
world  as  subject. 

The  same  principle  holds  with  the  repub- 
lics developing  at  the  close  of  the  middle  age, 
in  Italy,  in  the  towns  of  the  Hanseatic  League 
and  elsewhere.    Always  the  freedom  achieved 


MODERN  DEMOCRACY  93 

was  for  a  city,  a  group  or  a  class,  never  for 
all  the  people. 

Our  dream,  on  the  contrary,  is  to  take  all 
the  men  and  women  in  the  land,  ultimately  in 
the  world,  and  help  them,  through  the  free 
and  cooperative  activity  of  each  with  all  the 
rest,  on  toward  life,  liberty,  happiness,  intel- 
ligence— all  the  ends  of  life  that  are  worth 
while.  If  we  demand  life  for  ourselves,  we 
ask  it  only  in  harmony  with  the  best  life  for 
all.  We  want  no  special  privilege,  no  benefit 
apart,  bought  at  the  price  of  the  best  welfare 
of  humanity.  "We,"  unfortunately,  does  not 
yet  mean  all  of  us,  but  it  does  signify  an  in- 
creasing multitude,  rallying  to  this  that  is  the 
standard  of  to-morrow. 

A  third  transformation,  at  least  equally  im- 
portant with  these,  is  in  the  invention,  for  it  is 
no  less,  of  representative  government.  Politi- 
cal thinkers,  such  as  John  Fiske,  have  tried  to 
make  us  understand  what  this  invention 
means:  we  do  not  yet  realize  it.  The  devel- 
opment of  representative  government  is  the 
cause,  first  of  all,  of  the  tremendous  expan- 
sion of  the  area  over  which  we  apply  democ- 
racy.    Plato,  in  the  Laws,  limits  the  size  of 


94      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

the  ideal  state — the  one  realizable  in  this 
world — to  5040  citizens.  Why?  Well,  the 
exact  number  has  a  certain  mystical  signifi- 
cance, but  the  main  reason  is,  Plato  could  not 
imagine  a  much  larger  body  of  citizens  than 
5000  meeting  together  in  public  assembly  and 
fulfilling  the  functions  of  citizenship. 

We  have  extended  democracy  over  a  hun- 
dred millions  of  population,  dwelling  on  the 
larger  part  of  a  continent;  and  if  one  travels 
North,  South,  East,  West,  to-day,  one  is  im- 
pressed that,  in  spite  of  unassimilated  ele- 
ments, everywhere  men  and  women  are  proud, 
first  of  all,  of  being  American  citizens,  and 
only  in  subordinate  ways  devoted  to  the  sec- 
tion or  community  to  which  they  belong. 
This  has  been  made  possible  by  the  invention 
and  development  of  representative  govern- 
ment. 

That  is  not  all:  it  is  representative  govern- 
ment that  takes  the  sting  out  of  all  the  older 
criticisms  of  democracy.  Plato  devotes  one 
of  the  saddest  portions  of  his  Republic  to 
showing  how  in  a  brief  time,  democracy  must 
inevitably  fall  and  be  replaced  by  tyranny. 
With  the  democracy  Plato  knew  this  was  true. 


MODERN  DEMOCRACY         95 

It  was  impossible  for  Athens  to  protect  and 
make  permanent  her  constitution.  She  might 
pass  a  law  declaring  the  penalty  of  death  on 
any  one  proposing  a  change  in  the  constitu- 
tion. It  did  no  good.  Let  some  demagogue 
arise,  sure  of  the  suffrage  of  a  majority  of  the 
citizens:  he  could  call  them  into  public  as- 
sembly, cause  a  repeal  of  the  law,  and  make 
any  change  in  the  constitution  he  desired. 
There  was  no  way  to  prevent  it. 

It  is  the  invention  and  development  of  rep- 
resentative government  that  has  changed  all 
that.  We  chafe  under  the  slow-moving  char- 
acter of  our  democracy — over  the  time  it  takes 
to  get  laws  enacted  and  the  longer  time  to  get 
them  executed.  We  may  well  be  patient:  this 
slow-moving  character  of  democracy  is  the 
other  side  of  its  greatest  safe-guard.  It  is  be- 
cause we  cannot  immediately  express  in  ac- 
tion the  popular  will  and  opinion,  but  must 
think  two,  three,  many  times,  working  through 
chosen  and  responsible  representatives  of  the 
people,  that  our  democracy  is  not  subject  to 
the  perils  and  criticisms  of  those  of  antiquity. 

The  voice  of  the  people  in  the  day  and  hour, 
under  the  impulse  of  sudden  caprice  or  pas- 


96      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

sion,  is  anything  but  the  voice  of  God:  it  is 
much  more  apt  to  be  the  voice  of  all  the  pow- 
ers of  darkness.  It  is  common  thought,  sifted 
through  uncommon  thought,  that  approaches 
as  near  the  voice  of  God  as  we  can  hope  to 
get  in  this  world.  It  is  not  the  surface  whim 
of  public  opinion,  it  is  its  greatest  common 
denominator  that  approximates  the  truth. 

It  behooves  us  to  remember  this  at  a  time 
when  changes  are  coming  with  such  swiftness. 
Our  life  has  developed  so  rapidly  that  the  old 
political  forms  proved  inadequate  to  the  so- 
lution of  the  new  problems.  As  a  practical 
people,  we  therefore  quickly  adopted  or  in- 
vented new  forms.  Doubtless  this  is,  in  the 
main,  right,  but  we  should  understand  clearly 
what  we  are  doing. 

For  instance,  one  of  the  great  changes,  re- 
cently inaugurated,  is  the  election  of  national 
senators  by  popular  vote.  Our  forefathers 
planned  that  the  national  upper  house  should 
represent  a  double  sifting  of  popular  opinion. 
We  elected  state  legislatures;  they,  in  turn, 
chose  the  national  senators:  thus  these  were 
twice  removed  from  the  popular  will.  It 
proved  easy  to  corrupt  state  legislatures;  the 


MODERN  DEMOCRACY  97 

national  senate  came  to  represent  too  much 
the  moneyed  interests;  and  so,  through  an 
amendment  to  the  constitution,  we  changed 
the  process,  and  now  elect  our  senators  by  di- 
rect vote  of  the  people.  This  makes  them 
more  immediately  representative  of  the  pop- 
ular will,  and  perhaps  the  change  was  wise; 
but  we  should  recognize  that  we  have  re- 
moved one  more  safe-guard  of  democracy. 

A  story,  told  for  a  generation,  and  fixed 
upon  various  British  statesmen,  will  illustrate 
my  meaning.  The  last  repetition  attributed 
it  to  John  Burns.  On  one  occasion,  while  he 
was  a  member  of  Parliament,  it  is  said  he  was 
at  a  tea-party  in  the  West  End  of  London. 
The  hostess,  pouring  his  cup  of  tea,  anxious 
to  make  talk  and  show  her  deep  interest  in 
politics,  said,  "Mr.  Burns,  what  is  the  use  of 
the  house  of  Lords  anyway?"  The  statesman, 
without  replying,  poured  his  tea  from  the  cup 
into  the  saucer.  The  hostess,  surprised  at  the 
breach  of  etiquette,  waited,  and  then  said, 
"but  Mr.  Burns,  you  didn't  answer  my  ques- 
tion." He  pointed  to  the  tea,  cooling  in  the 
saucer:  that  was  the  function,  to  cool  the  tea 


98      THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

of  legislation.  That  was  the  function  in- 
tended for  our  national  senate.  The  trouble 
was,  the  tea  of  legislation  often  became  so 
stone  cold  in  the  process  that  it  was  fit  only  for 
the  political  slop-pail,  and  that  was  not  what 
we  wanted.  So  we  have  changed  it  all,  but 
one  more  safe-guard  of  democracy  is  gone. 

So  with  other  reforms,  loudly  acclaimed,  as 
the  initiative  and  referendum.  With  the  new 
problems  and  complications  of  an  extraordin- 
arily developed  life,  it  is  doubtless  wise  that 
the  people  should  be  able  to  initiate  legisla- 
tion and  should  have  the  final  word  as  to  what 
legislation  shall  stand.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
we  are  not  to  suffer  under  a  mass  of  hasty  and 
ill-considered  legislation,  if  laws  are  to  stand, 
they  must  always  be  formulated  by  a  body  of 
trained  legislators,  and  not  by  the  changing 
whim  of  popular  opinion. 

So  with  the  recall,  now  so  widely  demanded 
in  many  sections  of  the  country.  In  the  old 
days,  our  candidates  were  most  obsequious 
and  profuse  in  promises  to  their  constituents 
before  election;  but  once  elected,  only  too 
often  they  turned  their  backs  on  their  constit- 


MODERN  DEMOCRACY         99 

uents,  went  merrily  their  own  way,  making 
deals  and  bargains,  in  the  spirit  that  "to  the 
victor  belong  the  spoils."  Therefore  we 
justly  demanded  some  control  of  them,  after, 
as  before,  election:  hence  the  recall.  Again 
the  movement  is  right;  but  if  the  fundamen- 
tals of  democracy  are  to  be  permanent,  that 
body  of  men,  concerned  with  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  constitution  and  the  fundamental 
law  of  the  land,  must  not  be  subject  to  the 
immediate  whim  of  mob  mind,  and  the  power 
to  recall  those  judges  occupied  with  this  task 
would  be  a  graver  danger  than  advantage. 
They  will  make  mistakes,  at  times  they  will 
be  ultra  conservative  and  servants  of  special 
interests,  but  that  is  one  of  the  incidental 
prices  we  have  to  pay  for  the  permanence  of 
free  institutions.  The  problem  is  to  keep  the 
basic  principles  of  democracy  unchanged,  the 
forms  on  the  surface  as  fluid  and  adjustable 
as  possible. 

It  is  these  three  transformations — the  aban- 
donment of  the  old  abstract  notions  and  the 
testing  of  democracy  by  its  results,  the  expan- 
sion of  its  application  over  the  entire  popu- 
lation, and  the  invention  and  development  of 


loo    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

representative  government — it  is  these  three 
changes  that  make  our  democracy  a  nev^  or- 
der of  society,  new  in  its  problems,  its  men- 
aces, its  solutions. 


DEMOCRACY  AND  EDUCATION 

All  just  government  is  a  transient  device  to 
make  ordered  progress  possible.  In  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  there  would  be  no  government, 
for  if  all  human  beings  saw  the  best,  loved  the 
best  and  willed  the  best,  the  function  of  gov- 
ernment would  be  at  an  end.  Obviously  there 
is  no  hope  or  fear  that  we  shall  get  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  soon,  and  the  necessity  for 
government  will  exist  for  an  indefinitely  long 
time.  Nevertheless,  government  is  due  to  the 
imperfection  of  human  nature  and,  as  stated, 
its  aim  is  ordered  progress.  Progress  without 
order  is  anarchy;  order  without  progress  is 
stagnation  and  death. 

It  must  frankly  be  admitted,  moreover,  that 
democracy  is  not  the  shortest  road  to  good 
government  nor  to  economic  efficiency.  That 
we  recognize  this  as  a  people  is  proved  by  the 
drift  of  our  opinion  and  of  the  changes  in  our 


102    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

lesser  institutions.  Take,  for  instance,  our 
city  government.  A  few  decades  ago  our 
cities  were  so  notoriously  misgoverned  that 
they  were  the  scandal  of  the  world.  Our 
boards  of  aldermen  or  councilmen,  represent- 
ing ward  constituencies,  with  all  sorts  of  local 
strings  tied  to  them,  were  clumsy  and  un- 
wieldy and  easily  subject  to  corruption. 

So,  about  twenty  years  ago,  all  across  the 
country  went  the  cry,  "Get  a  good  mayor,  and 
give  him  a  free  hand."  That  is  the  way  our 
great  industries  are  conducted:  a  wise  captain 
of  industry  is  secured  and  given  full  control. 
Being  a  practical  people,  and  imagining  our- 
selves to  be  much  more  practical  than  really 
we  are,  we  said,  let  us  conduct  our  city  busi- 
ness in  the  same  way.  Why  not?  Plato 
showed  long  ago  that  you  can  get  the  best 
government  in  the  shortest  time  by  getting  a 
good  tyrant,  and  giving  him  a  free  hand. 

There  are  just  two  objections.  The  first  is 
incidental:  it  is  exceedingly  difficult  to  keep 
your  tyrant  good.  Arbitrary  authority  over 
one's  fellows  is  about  the  most  corrupting  in- 
fluence known  to  man.  No  one  is  great  and 
good  enough  to  be  entrusted  with  it.    Respon- 


DEMOCRACY  AND  EDUCATION    103 

sible  power  sobers  and  educates,  irresponsible 
power  corrupts.  Nevertheless  we  pay  the 
price  of  this  error  and  learn  the  lesson. 

The  other  objection  is  more  significant.  It 
is  the  effect  on  the  rank  and  file  of  the  citizen- 
ship, for  the  meaning  of  democracy  is  not  im- 
mediate results  in  government,  but  the  educa- 
tion of  the  citizen,  and  that  education  can 
come  only  by  fulfilling  the  functions  of  citi- 
zenship. Thus  it  is  better  to  be  the  free  citi- 
zen of  a  democracy,  with  all  the  waste  and 
temporary  inefficiency  democracy  involves, 
than  to  be  the  inert  slave  of  the  most  perfect 
paternal  despotism  ever  devised  by  man. 
Thus  the  movement  away  from  democratic 
city  government  is  gravely  to  be  questioned, 
no  matter  what  economic  results  it  secures. 

The  same  argument  applies  to  more  recent 
changes,  as  the  commission  form  of  city  gov- 
ernment. As  in  the  previous  case,  reacting 
upon  the  scandalous  situation,  we  said,  "Let 
us  choose  the  three  to  five  best  men  in  the  com- 
munity, and  let  them  run  the  city's  business 
for  us."  Nearly  every  time  this  change  has 
been  made,  the  result  has  been  an  immediate 
cleaning  up  of  the  city  government;  but  why? 


104    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

Chiefly  because  "a  new  broom  sweeps  clean," 
— not  so  much  for  the  reason  that  it  is  new, 
as  because  you  are  interested  in  the  instru- 
ment. You  can  get  a  dirty  room  remarkably 
clean  with  an  old  broom,  if  you  will  sweep 
hard  enough.  The  cleaning  up  is  due,  not 
primarily  to  the  instrument,  but  to  the  hand 
that  wields  it. 

To  speak  less  figuratively:  the  cleaning  up 
of  the  city  government  with  the  inauguration 
of  the  commission  system,  came  because  the 
change  was  made  by  an  awakening  of  the 
good  people  of  the  community.  Good  people 
have  a  habit,  however,  of  going  to  sleep  in  an 
astoundingly  short  time;  but  the  gang  never 
sleeps.  Now  suppose,  while  the  good  people 
are  dozing  in  semi-somnolence,  assured  that 
the  new  broom  will  sweep  of  itself,  the  gang 
gets  together  and  elects  the  three  to  five  worst 
gangsters  in  the  city  to  be  the  commission? 
Is  it  not  evident  that  the  very  added  efficiency 
of  the  instrument  means  greater  graft  and  cor- 
ruption? 

Equally  the  argument  applies  to  the  most 
recent  device  suggested — the  city  manager 
plan.    As  we  have  largely  taken  our  schools 


DEMOCRACY  AND  EDUCATION    105 

out  of  politics,  and  have  a  non-partisan  edu- 
cational expert  as  superintendent,  so  it  is  sug- 
gested we  should  conduct  our  city  business. 
Again,  suppose  the  gang  appoints  the  city 
manager:  he  will  be  an  expert  in  graft,  rather 
than  in  government. 

The  moment  a  people  gets  to  trusting  to  a 
device  it  is  headed  for  danger.  There  is  just 
one  safe-guard  of  democracy,  and  that  is  to 
keep  the  good  people  awake  and  at  the  task 
all  the  time.  Some  instruments  are  better  and 
some  are  worse,  but  the  instrument  never  does 
the  work,  it  is  the  hand  and  brain  that  wield 
it. 

If  there  is  one  field  where  we  could  reason- 
ably expect  to  find  pure  democracy,  it  is  in 
our  higher  educational  institutions.  In  a  col- 
lege or  university,  where  a  group  of  young 
men  and  women,  and  a  group  of  older  men 
and  women  are  gathered  apart,  out  of  the  se- 
verer economic  struggle,  dedicated  to  ideal 
ends:  there,  surely,  we  could  expect  pure  de- 
mocracy in  organization  and  relationship;  yet 
the  tendency  has  been  steadily  toward  autoc- 
racy. One  can  count  the  fingers  of  both  hands 
and  not  cover  the  list  of  college  and  univer- 


io6    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

sity  presidents  who  have  taken  office  during 
the  last  fifteen  years,  only  on  condition  that 
they  have  complete  authority  over  the  educa- 
tional policy  of  the  institution,  and  often  over 
its  financial  policy  as  well.  The  reason  is  ob- 
vious: we  run  a  railroad  efficiently  by  getting 
a  good  president  and  giving  him  arbitrary 
control;  why  not  a  university? 

There  are  just  the  two  objections  cited 
above:  even  in  a  university,  it  is  difficult  to 
keep  your  tyrant  good.  This,  again,  is  the 
minor  objection.  The  real  evil  is  in  the  ef- 
fect upon  the  rank  and  file  of  those  governed 
by  the  autocrat.  There  are  men  in  university 
faculties  to-day  who  say,  privately,  that  if 
they  could  get  any  other  opportunity,  they 
would  resign  to-morrow,  for  they  feel  like 
clerks  in  a  department  store,  with  no  oppor- 
tunity to  help  determine  the  educational  pol- 
icy of  the  institutions  of  which  they  are  inte- 
gral parts. 

The  German  university,  under  all  the  au- 
tocracy and  bureaucracy  of  the  German  state, 
is  more  democratic  in  its  organization  than 
our  own.  Its  faculty  is  a  self-governing  body, 
electing  to  its  own  membership.     The  Rec- 


DEMOCRACY  AND  EDUCATION    107 

torship  is  an  honor  conferred  for  the  year 
on  some  faculty  member  for  superior  worth 
and  scholarship.  Each  member  of  the  faculty 
may  thus  feel  the  self-respect  and  dignity,  re- 
sulting from  the  power  and  initiative  he  pos- 
sesses as  a  free  citizen  of  the  institution. 

Let  me  suggest  what  would  be  the  ideal 
democratic  organization  of  a  college  or  uni- 
versity. Why  not  apply  the  same  division 
of  functions  of  government  that  has  proved  so 
successful  in  the  state?  The  board  of  Trus- 
tees is  the  natural  judiciary;  the  President, 
the  executive.  The  faculty  is  the  legislative 
body,  with  the  student  body  as  a  sort  of  lower 
house,  cooperating  in  enacting  the  legislation 
for  its  own  government.  Where  has  such  a 
plan  been  tried? 

If  the  primary  purpose  of  democracy  is 
thus,  not  immediate  results  in  government, 
but  the  education  of  the  citizen,  on  the  other 
hand,  democracy  rests,  for  its  safety  and  prog- 
ress, on  the  ever  better  education  of  the  citi- 
zen. Under  the  older  forms  of  human  so- 
ciety, laws  may  be  passed  and  executed  that 
are  far  in  advance  of  public  opinion.  That 
cannot  be  done  in  a  democracy.    The  law  may 


io8    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

be  a  slight  step  in  advance,  and  so  perhaps 
educate  public  opinion  to  its  level;  but  if  it 
goes  beyond  that  step,  after  the  first  flurry  of 
interest  in  the  law  is  past,  it  remains  a  dead 
letter  on  the  statute  books — worse  than  use- 
less, because  cultivating  that  dangerous  disre- 
spect for  all  law,  which  we  have  seen  growing 
upon  us  as  a  people. 

Thus  from  either  side,  the  problem  of  de- 
mocracy is  a  problem  of  education.  It  rests 
upon  education,  its  aim  is  education.  In  a  de- 
mocracy, the  supreme  function  of  the  state  is, 
not  to  establish  a  military  system  for  defense, 
or  a  police  system  for  protection,  it  is  not  the 
enforcement  of  public  and  private  contract: 
it  is  to  take  the  children  and  youth  of  each 
generation  and  develop  them  into  men  and 
women  able  to  fulfill  the  responsibility  and 
enjoy  the  opportunity  of  free  citizenship  in  a 
free  society. 


XVI 

MENACES  OF  DEMOCRACY 

Since  modern  democracy  is  a  new  thing 
under  the  sun,  so  its  menaces  are  new,  or,  if 
old,  they  take  misleadingly  new  forms.  For 
instance,  the  greatest  danger  in  the  path  of 
our  democracy  is  the  world-old  evil  of  selfish- 
ness, but  it  does  take  surprisingly  new  form. 
It  is  not  aggressive  selfishness  that  we  have 
primarily  to  dread.  There  are  those,  it  is 
true,  who  believe  we  may  soon  be  endangered 
by  the  ambitions  of  some  arrogant  leader  in 
the  nation.  The  fear  is  unwarranted,  for  our 
people  are  still  so  devoted  to  the  fundamen- 
tal principles  of  democracy,  that  if  any  leader 
were  to  take  one  clear  step  toward  over-riding 
the  constitution  and  making  himself  despot, 
that  step  would  be  his  political  death-blow. 
No,  we  are  not  yet  endangered  by  the  aggres- 
sive ambitions  of  those  at  the  front,  but  we  are 

in  grave  danger  from  the  negative  selfishness 

109 


no    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

of  indifference,  shown  in  its  worst  form  by 
just  those  people  who  imagine  they  are  good 
because  they  are  respectable,  whereas  they 
may  be  merely  good — for  nothing. 

Plato  argued  that  society  could  never  have 
patriotism  in  full  measure  until  the  family 
was  abolished.  A  singular  notion  that  any 
school  boy  to-day  can  readily  answer,  yet  here 
is  the  curious  situation.  Family  life,  among 
ourselves,  in  its  better  aspects,  has  reached  a 
higher  plane  than  ever  before  in  any  people. 
More  marriages  are  made  on  the  only  decent 
basis  of  any  marriage.  This  is  the  woman's 
land.  Children  have  their  rights  and  priv- 
ileges, even  to  their  physical,  mental  and 
moral  detriment.  It  is  here  that  men  most 
willingly  sacrifice  for  their  families,  slaving 
through  the  hot  summer  in  the  cities,  to  send 
wife  and  children  to  the  seashore  or  the  moun- 
tains; yet  it  is  just  here  that  men  most  readily 
unhinge  their  consciences  when  they  turn 
from  private  to  public  life. 

Some  cynic  has  said  that  there  is  not  an 
American  citizen  who  would  not  smuggle  to 
please  his  wife.     Of  course  the  statement  is 


MENACES  OF  DEMOCRACY     in 

not  true,  but  if  you  have  ever  crossed  the  ocean 
on  a  transatlantic  liner,  and  watched  the  de- 
vices to  which  ordinarily  decent  men — men 
who  would  be  ashamed  to  steal  your  pocket 
handkerchief  or  to  lie  to  you  as  an  individual 
— will  resort,  in  order  to  lie  to  the  govern- 
ment or  steal  from  the  government,  you  begin 
to  wonder  if  the  cynic  was  not  right.  The 
law,  obviously,  may  be  unjust:  if  so,  protest 
against  it  and  seek  to  have  it  changed,  but 
while  it  is  the  law,  does  it  not  deserve  your 
respectful  obedience,  unless  you  would  add  to 
the  dangerously  growing  disrespect  for  all 
law? 

Next  to  the  menace  of  selfishness  is  that 
of  ignorance,  and  this,  too,  takes  confusingly 
new  form.  It  is  not  ignorance  of  scientific 
fact  and  law,  dangerous  as  that  is,  that  threat- 
ens, but  ignorance  of  what  our  institutions 
mean,  of  what  they  have  cost,  of  the  ideal  for 
which  we  stand  among  the  nations.  The  ce- 
lerity with  which,  even  during  the  past  two 
decades,  the  younger  generation  has  aban- 
doned old  standards  and  ideals,  is  an  ominous 
illustration.    It  is  true: 


112    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

"New  occasions  teach  new  duties;  time   makes  ancient 

goods  uncouth; 
'They  must  upward  still,  and  onward,  who  would  keep 
abreast  of  Truth." 


Those  words  of  Lowell's  are  as  fully  appli- 
cable to  the  present  crisis,  as  to  that  for  which 
Lowell  wrote  them;  but  to  give  up  the  past, 
without  knowing  that  you  are  letting  go,  is 
surely  not  the  part  of  wisdom 

A  third  menace  shows  in  that  fickleness  of 
temper  and  false  standard  of  life  that  cause  us 
to  admire  the  wrong  type  of  leader.  Prob- 
ably one  half  of  all  the  attacks  on  men  of  un- 
usual wealth  and  success  come  from  other 
men,  who  would  like  to  be  in  the  same  situa- 
tion with  those  they  attack,  and  have  failed  of 
their  ambition.  Part  of  the  attack  is  sincere, 
no  doubt,  but  if  you  assumed  that  all  the  abuse 
heaped  upon  conspicuous  men  came  from 
moral  conviction,  you  would  utterly  misread 
the  situation. 

On  the  other  hand,  men  of  moral  excellence 
make  us  ashamed.  Now  it  takes  a  rarely 
magnanimous  spirit  to  be  shamed  and  not  re- 
cent it.    We  are  apt  to  feel  that,  if  we  can  pull 


MENACES  OF  DEMOCRACY    113 

another  down,  we  raise  ourselves.  To  realize 
this,  consider  the  growl  of  joy  that  comes 
from  the  worse  sort  of  citizen  and  newspaper 
when  some  public  leader  is  caught  in  a  pri- 
vate scandal.  As  if  pulling  him  down,  raised 
us!  We  are  all  tarred  with  his  disgrace. 
There  are,  indeed,  two  ways  of  stating  the 
ideal  of  democracy:  you  can  say,  "I  am  just 
as  good  as  any  one  else,"  which  in  the  first 
place,  is  not  true,  and,  in  the  second,  would 
be  unlovely  of  you  to  express,  were  it  true. 
You  can  say,  on  the  contrary,  "Every  other 
human  being  ought  to  have  just  as  good  a 
chance  as  I  have,"  which  is  right;  and  yet  you 
will  hear  the  ideal  of  democracy  phrased  a 
dozen  times  the  first  way,  where  it  is  expressed 
once  in  the  second  form. 

That  democracies  are  fickle  is  one  of  the 
oldest  criticisms  upon  them.  We  had  thought 
that  we  were  not  subject  to  that  criticism,  and 
in  the  old  days  we  were  not.  We  had  the 
countr}-  debating  club  and  the  village  lyceum. 
We  were  an  agricultural  people,  sober  and 
slow-moving.  We  had  few  books,  they  were 
good  books  and  we  read  them  many  times. 
We  had  few  newspapers,  we  knew  the  men 


114    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

who  wrote  in  them,  and  w^hen  we  read  an  edi- 
torial, our  mind  was  actively  challenged  by 
the  sincere  thinking  of  another  mind. 

To-day,  everywhere,  we  have  moved  into 
the  cities.  The  strength  of  the  country-side 
is  sobriety  and  slow  incubation  of  the  forces 
of  life.  Its  vice  is  stupidity.  The  strength 
of  the  city  is  keen  wittedness,  versatility, 
quick  response.  Its  vice  is  fickleness,  morbid- 
ity, exhaustion.  We  have  our  great  blanket 
sheet  newspapers,  representing  a  party,  a 
clique,  a  financial  interest,  with  writers  lend- 
ing their  brains  out,  for  money,  to  write  edi- 
torials for  causes  in  which  they  do  not  believe. 
We  have  the  multitude  of  books,  incessantly 
and  hastily  produced;  we  read  much,  and 
scarcely  think  at  all.  We  have  got  rid  of  the 
old  "three  decker"  novel,  reduced  it  to  a 
single  volume,  and  then  taken  out  the  climax 
of  the  story,  publishing  it  in  the  corner  of  the 
daily  newspaper,  as  the  short  story  of  the  day, 
so  that  he  who  runs  may  read.  If  he  is  a  wise 
man  he  will  run  as  fast  as  he  can  and  not  read 
that  stufif  at  all.  We  have  our  ever  increasing 
"movies,"  with  their  incessant  titillation  of 
the  mind  with  swift  passing  impressions,  as 


MENACES  OF  DEMOCRACY    115 

disintegrating  to  intellectual  concentration,  as 
they  are  injurious  to  the  eyes.  The  result  of 
it  all  is  an  increasing  fickleness  of  temper,  so 
that  the  same  people  who  shout  most  loudly 
when  the  popular  hero  goes  by,  the  next  week 
cover  his  very  name  with  vituperation  and 
abuse,  if  he  offends  their  slightest  whim. 

This  evil  breeds  another:  fickleness  in  the 
people  means  demagoguery  in  the  leader,  in- 
evitably. We  have  said  to  our  public  men — 
not  in  words,  but  by  the  far  more  impressive 
language  of  our  conduct — "get  money,  power, 
success,  and  we  will  give  you  more  money, 
power  and  success,  and  not  ask  you  how  you 
got  them  nor  what  ends  you  serve  in  using 
them."  That  so  many  have  refused  the  bribe 
is  to  their  credit,  not  ours ;  we  have  done  what 
we  could  to  corrupt  them. 

Finally,  we  are  the  most  irreverent  people 
in  the  world.  We  believe  in  youth,  we  scorn 
age.  We  have  splendid  enthusiasm,  we  do  not 
know  what  wisdom  means.  One  hears  college 
presidents  say — half  jokingly,  of  course — that 
there  is  no  use  appointing  a  man  over  thirty 
to  the  faculty  these  days.  So  one  hears  Chris- 
tian ministers,  in  those  denominations  where 


ii6    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

the  minister  is  called  by  the  particular  church, 
say  there  is  no  use  trying  to  get  another  call 
after  one  is  fifty!  Of  course,  it  is  not  true,  but 
it  is  true  enough  to  be  a  serious  criticism  upon 
us.  For  what  other  vocation  is  there  where 
the  mellowness  that  comes  only  from  time  and 
long  experience,  from  presiding  at  weddings 
and  standing  beside  open  graves,  sharing  the 
joys  and  sorrows  of  innumerable  persons,  is  so 
indispensable,  as  in  the  pastor,  the  physician 
of  the  spirit?  Still,  we  will  turn  out  some 
wise,  shy,  mellow  old  man,  just  ripened  to  the 
point  of  being  the  true  minister  to  the  souls  of 
others,  and  replace  him  with  a  recent  grad- 
uate of  a  theological  school,  because  the  latter 
can  talk  the  language  of  the  higher  criticism 
or  whatever  else  happens  to  interest  us  for  the 
moment.  Obviously,  we  pay  the  price,  but 
think  what  it  indicates  of  our  civilization. 


XVII 
THE  DILEMMA  OF  DEMOCRACY 

We  have  seen  that  the  gravest  menaces  of 
democracy  are  the  faults  in  mind  and  charac- 
ter in  the  multitude.  Selfishness,  fickleness, 
ignorance,  irreverence  in  the  people,  with 
demagoguery  in  the  leader — these  are  the 
menaces  of  American  democracy.  How^  then 
can  the  people  be  trusted,  since  democracy  de- 
pends upon  trusting  them?  This  is  an  old  in- 
dictment, searching  to  the  very  heart  of  de- 
mocracy. Plato  made  it  of  ancient  Athens, 
while,  more  recently  and  trenchantly,  Ibsen 
has  made  it  for  all  modern  society. 

The  argument  runs  thus:  democracy  means 
the  rule  of  the  majority.  Well,  there  are  more 
fools  than  wise  men  in  the  world,  more  ignor- 
ant than  intelligent.  Thus  the  rule  of  the  ma- 
jority must  mean  the  rule  of  the  fools  over  the 
wise  men,  of  the  ignorant  over  the  intelligent. 

Such  is  the  significant  indictment,  and  we  are 

117 


ii8    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

compelled  to  admit  that  our  political  life  is 
filled  with  illustrations  that  would  seem  to 
substantiate  it.  The  ward  bosses,  the  dema- 
gogues and  grafters  who  are  given  power  by 
the  multitude,  one  campaign  after  another, 
would  seem  to  justify  the  pessimism  of  Plato 
and  Ibsen. 

Is  there  not,  however,  a  subtle  fallacy  in 
the  very  phrasing  of  the  indictment?  The 
majority  does  not  "rule":  it  elects  representa- 
tives who  guide.  That  is  something  entirely 
different.  When  the  worst  is  said  of  them 
those  representatives  of  the  people  are  dis- 
tinctly above  the  average  of  the  majorities 
electing  them.  Take  the  roll  of  our  presi- 
dents, for  instance.  With  all  the  corruption 
and  vulgarity  of  our  national  politics,  that 
list,  from  Washington,  through  such  altitudes 
as  Jefferson  and  Lincoln,  to  the  present  occu- 
pant of  the  White  House,  is  superior  to  any 
roster  of  kings  or  emperors  in  the  history  of 
mankind. 

What  does  this  mean?  It  means  that  the 
hope  of  democracy  is  the  instinctive  poiver  in 
the  breast  of  common  humanity  to  recognize 
the  highest  when  it  appears.     Were  this  not 


DILEMMA  OF  DEMOCRACY    119 

true,  democracy  would  be  the  most  hopeless 
of  mistakes,  and  the  sooner  we  abandoned  it, 
with  its  vulgarity  and  waste,  the  better  it 
would  be  for  us.  The  instinctive  power  is 
there,  however:  to  recognize,  not  to  live,  the 
highest. 

How  many  have  followed  the  example  of 
Socrates,  remaining  in  prison  and  accepting 
the  hemlock  poison  for  the  sake  of  truth?  Yet 
all  who  know  of  him  thrill  to  his  sacrifice. 
Of  all  who  have  borne  the  name.  Christian, 
how  many  have  followed  consistently  the  foot- 
steps of  Jesus  and  obeyed  literally  and  un- 
varyingly the  precepts  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount?  Of  the  millions,  perhaps  ten  or 
twenty  individuals — to  be  generous  in  our 
view;  but  all  the  world  recognizes  him. 

Here,  then,  is  the  hope  that  takes  the  sting 
from  the  indictment  of  Plato,  Ibsen  and  how 
many  other  critics  of  democracy.  Plato  said, 
"Until  philosophers  are  kings,  .  .  .  cities 
will  never  have  rest  from  their  evils, — no,  nor 
the  human  race,  as  I  believe."  Once,  perhaps 
once  only,  Plato's  dream  was  realized:  in  that 
noblest  of  philosopher  emperors,  wholly  dedi- 
cated to  the  welfare  of  the  world  he  ruled 


I20    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

with  autocratic  power;  yet  the  soul  of  Marcus 
Aurelius  was  burdened  with  an  impossible 
task.  It  is  one  of  the  tragic  ironies  of  history 
that,  in  this  one  realization  of  Plato's  lofty 
dream,  the  noble  emperor  could  postpone,  he 
could  not  avert,  the  colossal  doom  that  threat- 
ened the  world  he  ruled.  So  he  wrapped  his 
Roman  cloak  about  him  and  lay  down  to  sleep, 
with  stoic  consciousness  that  he  had  done  his 
part  in  the  place  where  Zeus  had  put  him,  but 
relieved  that  he  might  not  see  the  disaster  he 
knew  must  swiftly  come. 

How  different  our  dream:  it  is  no  illusion 
of  a  happy  accident  of  philosopher  kings. 
We  want  no  arbitrary  monarchs,  wise  or  bru- 
tal: from  the  noblest  of  emperors  to  the 
butcher  of  Berlin,  we  would  sweep  them  all 
aside,  to  the  ash-heap  of  outworn  tools.  Our 
dream  is  the  awakening  and  education  of  the 
multitude,  so  that  the  majority  will  be  able 
and  glad  to  choose,  as  its  guides,  leaders  and 
representatives,  the  noblest  and  best.  When 
that  day  comes,  there  will  be,  for  the  first  time 
in  the  history  of  mankind,  the  dawn  of  a  true 
aristocracy  or  rule  of  the  best;  and  it  will 
come  through  the  fulfillment  of  democracy. 


DILEMMA  OF  DEMOCRACY    121 

A  long  and  troubled  path,  with  many  faults 
and  evils  meantime?  Yes,  but  not  so  hope- 
lessly long,  when  one  considers  the  ages  of 
slow  struggle  up  the  mountain  and  the 
swiftly  multiplying  power  of  education  over 
the  mind  of  all. 


XVIII 

PATERNALISM  VERSUS  DEMOC- 
RACY 

The  contrast  between  paternalism  and  de- 
mocracy in  aim  and  method  is  thus  extreme. 
Paternalism  seeks  directly  organization,  or- 
der, production  and  efficiency,  incidentally 
and  occasionally  the  welfare  of  the  subject 
population.  Democracy  seeks  directly  the 
highest  development  of  all  men  and  women, 
their  freedom,  happiness  and  culture,  in  the 
end  it  hopes  this  will  give  social  order,  good 
government  and  productive  power.  It  is  will- 
ing, meantime,  to  sacrifice  some  measure  of 
order  for  freedom,  of  good  government  for 
individual  initiative,  of  efficiency  for  life. 
Paternalism  seeks  to  achieve  its  aims,  quickly 
and  effectively,  through  the  boss's  whip  of 
social  control.  Democracy  works  by  the 
slower,  but  more  permanently  hopeful  path  of 
education,  never  sacrificing  life  to  material 


PATERNALISM  123 

ends.  Paternalism  ends  in  a  social  hierarchy, 
materially  prosperous,  but  caste-ridden  and 
without  soul.  Democracy  ends  in  the  abolish- 
ment of  castes,  equality  of  opportunity,  with 
the  freest  individual  initiative  and  finest  flow- 
ering of  the  personal  spirit.  Which  shall  it 
be:  God  or  Mammon,  Men  or  Machines? 

There  is  no  doubt  that  efficiency  can  be 
achieved  most  quickly  under  a  well-wielded 
boss's  whip,  but  at  the  sacrifice  of  initiative 
and  invention.  Moreover,  remove  the  whip, 
and  the  efficiency  quickly  goes  to  pieces.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  efficiency  achieved  by  vol- 
untary effort  and  free  cooperation  comes 
much  more  slowly,  but  it  lasts.  Moreover,  it 
develops,  hand  in  hand,  with  initiative  and 
invention. 

The  negro,  doubtless,  has  never  been  so 
generally  eflicient  as  before  the  civil  war,  in 
the  South,  under  the  overseer's  whip ;  yet 
every  negro  who,  to-day,  has  character  enough 
to  save  up  and  buy  a  mule  and  an  acre  of 
ground,  tills  it  with  a  consistent  and  perman- 
ent effectiveness  of  which  slave  labor  is  never 
capable.    In  the  one  case,  moreover,  there  is 


124    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

the  average  economic  result,  in  the  other,  the 
gradual  development  of  manhood. 

Organize  a  factory  on  the  feudal  lines  so 
prevalent  in  current  industry.  Get  a  strong, 
dominating  superintendent  and  give  him  auto- 
cratic authority.  Quickly  he  will  show  re- 
sults. Always,  however,  there  is  the  danger 
of  strikes,  and  if  the  strong  hand  falters,  the 
organization  disintegrates.  On  the  other 
hand,  let  a  corporation  take  its  artisans  into 
its  confidence,  give  each  a  small  proportionate 
share  in  the  annual  earnings.  Each  worker 
will  feel  increasingly  that  the  business  is  his 
business.  He  will  take  pride  in  his  accom- 
plishment. Gradually  he  will  attain  effi- 
ciency, and  work  permanently,  without  over- 
sight, with  a  consistent  earnestness  no  boss's 
whip  ever  attained. 

The  experience  of  the  National  Cash  Reg- 
ister Company  at  Dayton,  Ohio,  proves  this. 
The  experiments  of  Henry  Ford  are  a  step 
toward  the  same  solution.  So,  in  lesser  meas- 
ure, is  the  plan  of  the  Steel  trust  to  permit 
and  encourage  its  employees  to  purchase  an- 
nually its  stock,  somewhat  below  the  current 


PATERNALISM  125 

market  price,  giving  a  substantial  bonus  if 
the  stock  is  held  over  ten  years. 

If  you  wish  an  illustration  on  a  larger  scale, 
consider  the  mass  formation  tactics  of  the  Ger- 
man soldiers,  in  contrast  to  the  individual 
courage,  initiative  and  action  of  the  French. 
There  are  the  two  types  of  efficiency  in  sheer- 
est contrast,  but  beyond  is  always  the  question 
of  their  effect  on  manhood.  France  has  saved 
and  regenerated  her  soul;  but  Germany — ? 

Further,  the  breakdown  of  paternalistically 
achieved  efficiency  has  been  evident  in  Ger- 
many's utter  failure  to  understand  the  mind 
of  other  peoples,  particularly  of  democracies. 
She  had  voluminous  data,  gathered  by  the 
most  atrociously  efficient  spy  system  ever  de- 
veloped, yet  she  utterly  misread  the  mind  of 
France,  England  and  the  United  States.  The 
same  break-down  is  evident  in  Germany's  fail- 
ure in  colonization  in  contrast  to  England's 
success. 

For  offensive  war,  it  must  be  admitted,  the 
efficiency  under  the  boss's  whip  will  go  fur- 
ther. For  defensive  war,  or  war  for  high 
moral  aims,  it  is  desirable  that  the  individual 
soldier  should  think  for  himself,  respond  to 


126    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

the  high  appeal.  Thus  for  such  warfare  the 
efficiency  of  voluntary  efifort  and  cooperation 
is  superior.  An  autocracy  would  better  rule 
its  soldiers  by  a  military  caste;  there  can  be 
no  excuse  for  such  in  a  democracy.  Thus, 
the  utmost  possible  fraternization  of  officers 
and  men  is  desirable,  and  social  snobbery,  the 
snubbing  of  officers  who  come  up  from  the 
ranks,  and  other  anachronistic  survivals, 
should  be  stamped  out,  as  utterly  foreign  to 
what  should  be  the  spirit  of  the  military  arm 
of  democracy. 

Further,  in  estimating  the  two  types,  one 
must  remember  that  paternalism  may  exercise 
its  power  in  secret  and  that  it  accomplishes 
much  in  the  dark.  Democracy,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  afflicted  and  blessed  with  pitiless  pub- 
licity. Thus  its  evils  are  all  exposed,  it 
washes  all  its  dirty  linen  in  public;  but  the 
main  thing  is  to  get  it  clean. 

When  it  comes  to  invention  and  initiative, 
as  already  indicated,  democracy  has  the  ad- 
vantage, immediately,  as  in  the  long  run.  We 
are  the  most  inventive  people  on  earth,  and 
that  quality  is  a  direct  result  of  our  demo- 
cratic individualism.     It  is  a  significant  fact 


PATERNALISM  127 

that  most  of  the  startling  inventions  used  in 
this  War  were  made  in  America — but  devel- 
oped and  applied  in  Germany.  There,  again, 
are  evident  the  contrasting  results  of  the  two 
types  of  social  organization.  The  indefatig- 
ably  industrious  and  docile  German  mind  can 
work  out  and  apply  the  inventions  furnished 
it,  with  marvelous  persistency  and  effective- 
ness, under  paternal  control.  We  have  the 
problem  of  achieving  by  voluntary  effort  and 
cooperation  a  persistent  thoroughness  in 
working  out  the  ideas  and  inventions  that 
come  to  us  in  such  abundant  measure. 
The  path  of  democracy  is  education. 


XIX 

THE  SOLUTION   FOR  DEMOCRACY 

When  we  say  that  the  path  of  democracy 
is  education,  we  do  not  mean  that  there  is  an 
easy  solution  of  its  problem.  There  is  no 
patent  medicine  we  can  feed  the  American 
people  and  cure  it  of  its  diseases.  There  is 
no  specific  for  the  menaces  that  threaten. 
Eternal  vigilance  and  effort  are  the  price,  not 
only  of  liberty,  but  of  every  good  of  man. 
Let  things  alone,  and  they  get  bad;  to  keep 
them  good,  we  must  struggle  everlastingly  to 
make  them  better.  Leave  the  pool  of  politics 
unstirred  by  putting  into  it  ever  new  individ- 
ual thought  and  ideal,  and  how  quickly  it  be- 
comes a  stagnant,  ill-smelling  pond.  Leave  a 
church  unvitalized,  by  ever  fresh  personal 
consecration,  and  how  quickly  it  becomes  a 
dead  form,  hampering  the  life  of  the  spirit. 
Leave  a  university  uninfluenced  by  ever  new 
earnestness  and  devotion  on  the  part  of  stu- 

128 


SOLUTION  FOR  DEMOCRACY     129 

dent  and  teacher,  and  how  soon  it  becomes  a 
scholastic  machine,  positively  oppressing  the 
mind  and  spirit. 

There  is  a  true  sense  in  which  the  universe 
exists  momentarily  by  the  grace  of  God. 
Take  light  away,  and  you  have  darkness. 
Take  darkness  away,  and  you  have  not  neces- 
sarily light;  you  might  have  chaos.  Take 
health  away,  and  you  have  disease.  Take 
disease  away,  and  you  have  not  necessarily 
health;  you  may  have  death.  Take  virtue 
away,  and  you  have  vice.  Take  vice  away, 
and  you  have  not  necessarily  virtue;  you 
might  have  negative  respectability.  Thus  it 
is  the  continual  affirmation  of  the  good  that 
keeps  the  heritage  of  yesterday  and  takes  the 
step  toward  to-morrow. 

Nevertheless,  if  there  is  no  easy  solution  of 
the  problem,  there  are  certain  big  lines  of  at- 
tack. If  we  are  right  in  our  diagnosis,  that 
the  problem  of  democracy  is  a  problem  of 
education,  then  our  whole  system  of  educa- 
tion, for  child,  youth  and  adult,  should  be  re- 
constructed to  focus  upon  the  building  of 
positive  and  effective  moral  personality. 

American  education  began  as  a  subsidiary 


I30    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

process.  Children  got  organic  education  in 
the  home,  on  the  farm,  in  the  work  shop. 
They  went  to  school  to  get  certain  formal  dis- 
ciplines, to  learn  to  read,  write  and  cipher 
and  to  acquire  formal  grammar.  With  the 
moving  into  the  cities,  the  industrial  revolu- 
tion and  the  entire  transformation  of  our  life, 
the  school  has  had  to  take  over  more  and  more 
of  the  process  of  organic  education.  If  chil- 
dren fail  to  get  such  education  in  the  school, 
they  are  apt  to  miss  it  altogether. 

With  this  entire  change  in  the  meaning  of 
the  school,  old  notions  of  its  purpose  still  sur- 
vive. Probably  no  one  is  so  benighted  to-day 
as  to  imagine  that  the  chief  function  of  the 
school  is  to  fill  the  mind  with  information; 
but  there  are  many  who  still  hold  to  the  tra- 
dition that  the  chief  purpose  of  education  is 
to  sharpen  the  intellectual  tools  of  the  individ- 
ual for  the  sake  of  his  personal  success.  This 
notion  is  a  misleading  survival,  for  tools  are 
of  value  only  in  terms  of  the  character  using 
them.  The  same  equipment  may  serve, 
equally,  good  or  bad  ends.  Only  as  education 
focusses  on  the  development  of  positive  and 


SOLUTION  FOR  DEMOCRACY    131 

effective  moral  character  can  it  aid  in  solving 
the  problem  of  democracy. 

Need  it  be  added  that  this  does  not  mean 
teaching  morals  and  manners  to  children, 
thirty  minutes  a  day,  three  times  a  week? 
That  is  a  minor  fragment  of  moral  educa- 
tion. It  means  that  all  phases  of  the  process 
— the  relation  of  pupil  and  teacher,  school  and 
home,  the  government  and  discipline,  the  les- 
sons taught  in  every  subject,  the  environment, 
the  proportioning  of  the  curriculum,  of  physi- 
cal, emotional  and  intellectual  culture — all 
shall  be  focussed  and  organized  upon  the  one 
significant  aim  of  the  whole — character. 

Further,  if  education  is  to  overcome  the 
menaces  and  solve  the  dilemma  of  democracy, 
it  must  be  carried  beyond  childhood  and 
youth  and  outside  the  walls  of  academic  in- 
stitutions. The  ever  wider  education  of  adult 
citizenship  is  indispensable  to  the  progress 
and  safety  of  democracy.  It  is  one  of  the 
glaring  illustrations  of  the  inefficiency  of  our 
democracy  that  there  are  still  communities 
where  school  boards  build  school  houses  with 
public  money,  open  them  five  or  six  hours, 
five  days  in  the  week,  and  refuse  to  allow  them 


132    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

to  be  opened  any  other  hour  of  the  day  or 
night,  for  a  civic  forum,  parents'  meeting, 
public  lecture  or  other  activity  of  adult  edu- 
cation; and  yet  we  call  ourselves  a  practical 
people!  Surely,  in  a  democracy,  the  state  is 
as  vitally  interested  in  the  education  of  the 
adult  citizen  as  of  the  child. 

Herein  is  the  significance  of  those  various 
extensions  of  education,  developing  and 
spreading  so  widely  to-day.  University-ex- 
tension and  Chautauqua  movements,  civic 
forums,  free  lectures  to  the  people  by  boards 
of  education  and  public  libraries,  summer 
schools,  night  schools  for  adults — all  are  illus- 
trations of  this  movement,  so  vital  to  the  prog- 
ress of  democracy.  Through  these  instrumen- 
talities the  popular  ideal  may  be  elevated,  the 
public  mind  may  be  trained  to  more  logical 
and  earnest  thought,  citizenship  may  be  made 
more  serious  and  intelligent,  and  finally  a 
most  helpful  influence  may  be  exerted  on  the 
academic  institutions  themselves.  It  is  an  eas- 
ily verifiable  truth  that  any  academic  institu- 
tion that  builds  around  itself  an  enclosing 
scholastic  wall,  refuses  to  go  outside  and  serve 
and  learn  in  the  larger  world  of  humanity. 


SOLUTION  FOR  DEMOCRACY    133 

in  the  long  run  inevitably  dies  of  academic 
dry  rot. 

In  the  endeavor  to  solve  the  problem  of  de- 
mocracy cannot  we  do  more  than  we  have 
done  hitherto  in  cultivating  reverence  for 
moral  leadership — the  quality  so  much  needed 
in  democracy  at  the  present  hour?  This  may 
be  achieved  through  many  aspects  of  educa- 
tion, but  especially  through  contact  with  noble 
souls  in  literature  and  history.  History, 
above  all,  is  the  great  opportunity,  and,  from 
this  point  of  view,  is  it  not  necessary  to  re- 
write our  histories:  instead  of  portraying 
solely  statesmen  and  warriors,  to  fill  them 
with  lofty  examples  of  leadership  in  all  walks 
of  life? 

Women  as  well  as  men:  for  surely  ideals  of 
both  should  be  fostered.  A  colleague,  inter- 
ested in  this  problem,  recently  took  one  of  the 
most  widely  used  text-books  of  American  his- 
tory, and  counted  the  pages  on  which  a  woman 
was  mentioned.  Of  the  five  hundred  pages, 
there  were  four:  not  four  pages  devoted  to 
women;  but  four  mentioning  a  woman.  What 
does  it  mean:  that  women  have  contributed 
less  than  one  part  in  a  hundred  and  twenty- 


134    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

five  to  the  development  of  American  life? 
Surely  no  one  would  think  that.  What,  then, 
are  the  reasons  for  the  discrepancy?  There 
are  several,  but  one  may  be  mentioned:  men 
have  written  the  histories,  and  they  have  writ- 
ten chiefly  of  the  two  fields  of  action  where 
men  have  been  most  important  and  women 
least,  war  and  statesmanship.  Surely,  how- 
ever, if  American  history  is  to  reveal  the 
American  spirit,  exercise  the  contagion  of 
noble  ideals  and  develop  reverence  for  true 
mioral  leadership,  it  must  present  types  of 
both  manhood  and  womanhood  in  all  fields  of 
action  and  endeavor. 

One  who  has  stood  with  Socrates  in  the 
common  criminal  prison  in  Athens  and 
watched  him  drink  the  hemlock  poison,  say- 
ing "No  evil  can  happen  to  a  good  man  in 
life  or  after  death,"  who  has  heard  the  ora- 
tion of  Paul  on  Mars  Hill  or  that  of  Pericles 
over  the  Athenian  dead,  who  has  thrilled  to 
the  heroism  of  Joan  of  Arc  and  Edith  Cavell, 
the  noble  service  of  Elizabeth  Fry  and  Flor- 
ence Nightingale,  the  high  appeal  of  Helen 
Hunt  Jackson  and  Elizabeth  Barrett  Brown- 
ing, who  has  heard  Giordano  Bruno  exclaim 


SOLUTION  FOR  DEMOCRACY    135 

as  the  flames  crept  up  about  him,  "I  die  a 
martyr,  and  willingly,"  who  has  responded  to 
the  calm  elevation  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  the 
cosmopolitan  wisdom  of  Goethe,  the  sweet 
gentleness  of  Maeterlinck's  spirit  and  the  ti- 
tan dreams  of  Ibsen,  can  scarcely  fail  to  ap- 
preciate the  brotherhood  of  all  men  and  to 
learn  that  reverence  for  the  true  moral  leader, 
that  dignifies  alike  giver  and  recipient. 


XX 

TRAINING    FOR    MORAL    LEADER- 
SHIP 

Since  the  path  of  democracy  is  education, 
moral  leadership  is  more  necessary  to  it,  than 
in  any  other  form  of  society;  yet  there  are 
exceptional  obstacles  to  its  development.  We 
speak  of  "the  white  light  that  beats  upon  a 
throne":  it  is  nothing  compared  to  the  search 
light  played  upon  every  leader  of  democracy. 
With  our  lack  of  reverence,  we  delight  in 
pulling  to  pieces  the  personalities  of  those 
who  lead  us.  Thus  it  is  increasingly  difficult 
to  get  men  of  sensitive  spirit  to  pay  the  price 
of  leadership  for  democracy. 

Is  it  not  possible  to  do  more  than  we  have 
done,  consciously  to  develop  such  leadership? 
Where  is  it  trained?  In  life,  the  college  and 
university,  the  normal  school,  the  schools  of 
law,  medicine  and  theology.  Yes,  but  if  not 
one  boy  and  girl  in  ten  graduates  from  the 
high  school,   surely  we  want  one  man   and 

136 


TRAINING  FOR  LEADERSHIP    137 

woman  in  ten  to  fulfill  some  measure  of  moral 
leadership,  and  the  high  school  is  directly 
concerned  with  the  task  of  furnishing  such 
leadership  for  American  democracy. 

If  that  is  true,  is  it  not  a  pity  that  the  high 
school  is  so  largely  dominated  from  above  by 
the  demand  of  the  college  upon  the  entering 
freshman?  It  is  not  to  be  taken  for  granted 
that  the  particular  regimen  of  studies,  best 
fitting  the  student  to  pass  the  entrance  exam- 
inations of  a  college  or  university,  is  the  best 
possible  for  the  nine  out  of  ten  students,  who 
go  directly  from  the  high  school  into  the 
world,  and  must  fulfill  some  measure  of  moral 
leadership  for  American  democracy.  The 
presumption  is  to  the  contrary.  College  pro- 
fessors are  human — some  of  them.  They  want 
students  prepared  to  enter  as  smoothly  as  pos- 
sible into  the  somewhat  artificial  curricula 
of  academic  studies  they  have  arranged.  The 
Latin  professor  wishes  not  to  go  back  and 
start  with  the  rudiments  of  his  subject,  as  the 
professor  of  mathematics  with  the  beginnings 
of  Algebra  and  Geometry.  The  result  is  they 
demand  of  the  high  school  what  fits  most 
smoothly  into  their  scheme. 


138    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

Now  if  it  is  not  possible  to  serve  equally 
the  needs  of  both  groups,  would  it  not  be  bet- 
ter to  neglect  the  one  tenth  of  the  students, 
going  on  to  college,  even  assuming  they  are 
the  pick  of  the  flock,  which  they  are  not  al- 
ways? They  have  four  more  years  to  correct 
their  mistakes  and  round  out  their  culture.  If 
any  one  must  be  subordinated,  it  would  be  bet- 
ter to  neglect  them,  and  focus  upon  the  needs 
of  the  nine  out  of  ten,  who  go  directly  from 
the  high  school  into  life  and  have  not  an- 
other chance ;  yet  there  are  states  in  the  Union, 
where  it  is  possible  for  a  committee  of  the 
state  university  at  the  top  to  say  to  every  high 
school  teacher  in  the  state,  "Conform  to  our 
requirements,  or  leave  the  state,  or  get  out  of 
the  profession."  The  threat,  moreover,  has 
been  carried  out  more  than  once. 

That  situation  is  utterly  wrong.  We  want 
organization  of  the  educational  system,  with 
each  unit  cooperating  with  the  next  higher, 
but  if  education  is  to  solve  the  problem  of  de- 
mocracy and  furnish  moral  leadership  for 
American  life,  we  want  each  unit  to  be  free, 
first  of  all,  to  serve  its  own  constituency  to  the 
best  of  its  power.    The  problem  is  not  serious 


TRAINING  FOR  LEADERSHIP     139 

for  the  big  city  high  school,  with  its  multi- 
plied elective  courses,  but  for  the  small  rural 
or  town  high  school,  with  its  limited  corps  of 
teachers  and  its  necessarily  fixed  courses,  the 
burden  is  onerous  indeed. 

Is  the  American  college  and  university  do- 
ing all  that  it  might  do  in  cultivating  moral 
leadership  for  American  democracy?  The 
last  decades  have  seen  an  astounding  and  un- 
paralleled development  of  higher  education 
in  America.  In  the  old  days,  the  college  was 
usually  on  a  denominational  foundation.  It 
was  supported  by  the  dollars  and  pennies  of 
earnest  religionists  who  believed  that  educa- 
tion was  necessary  to  religion  and  morality. 
The  president  was  generally  a  clergyman  of 
the  denomination;  he  taught  the  ethics  course, 
and  all  students  were  required  to  take  it. 
There  was  compulsory  chapel  attendance,  and 
once  a  day  the  entire  student  body  gathered 
together  to  listen  to  some  moral  and  religious 
thought. 

Then  came  the  immense  expansion  of 
higher  education.  Courses  were  multiplied 
and  diversified.  Universities  were  established 
or  endowed  by  the  state.    Academies  became 


I40    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

colleges,  and  colleges,  universities.  Institu- 
tions were  generally  secularized.  Compul- 
sory chapel  attendance  was  rightly  abandoned. 
Each  department  served  its  own  interest 
apart.  Until  to-day  certain  of  our  great  uni- 
versities are  not  unlike  vast  intellectual  de- 
partment stores,  with  each  professor  calling 
his  goods  across  the  counter,  and  the  president, 
a  sort  of  superior  floorwalker,  to  see  that  no 
one  clerk  gets  too  many  customers.  It  is  an 
impressive  illustration  of  what  has  happened 
to  our  higher  institutions  that,  in  certain  of 
them,  the  one  regular  meeting  place  of  the  en- 
tire student  body  in  a  common  interest,  is  the 
bleachers  by  the  athletic  field.  One  continues 
to  believe  in  college  athletics,  in  spite  of  the 
frequent  absurdities  and  worse,  done  in  their 
name;  only  if  the  numbers  of  those  playing 
the  game  and  those  exercising  only  their  lungs 
and  throats  from  the  bleachers,  were  reversed, 
better  all-round  athletic  education  would  re- 
suit.  Is  it  not,  however,  a  trenchant  criticism 
on  the  situation  in  our  higher  education,  that 
so  often  the  one  common  interest  should  be  in 
something  that  is,  at  least,  aside  from  the 
main  business  of  the  institution? 


TRAINING  FOR  LEADERSHIP    141 

Moreover,  no  institution  can  rightly  serve 
democracy,  unless  it  is  itself  democratic. 
Thus  the  growth  of  an  aristocratic  spirit  in 
our  colleges  and  universities  is  an  ominous 
sign.  For  instance,  it  is  still  true  that  any  boy 
or  girl,  with  a  sound  body  and  a  good  mind 
and  no  family  to  support,  can  get  a  college 
education.  Money  is  not  indispensable:  it  is 
possible  to  work  one's  way  through.  Will 
this  always  be  true?  One  wonders.  It  is  sig- 
nificant that  it  is  easiest  to  work  your  way 
through  college,  and  keep  your  self-respect 
and  the  respect  of  your  fellows,  in  the  small, 
meagerly  endowed  college  on  the  frontier.  It 
is  most  difficult,  with  a  few  exceptions  one 
gladly  recognizes,  in  the  great,  rich  universi- 
ties of  the  East.    What  does  that  mean? 

Straws  show  the  tide:  it  was  announced 
some  time  ago  by  the  president  of  one  of  our 
richest  and  oldest  universities  that  henceforth 
scholarships  in  that  institution  would  be 
given  solely  on  the  basis  of  intellectual  schol- 
arship, as  tested  by  examination;  and  ap- 
plause went  up  from  the  alumni  all  across  the 
country;  yet  what  does  it  mean?  It  means 
that  the  boy  who  has  to  work  on  a  threshing 


142    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

machine,  sell  books  to  an  unsuspecting  public, 
or  do  some  other  semi-honorable  work  all 
summer  to  get  back  into  college  in  the  Fall, 
cannot  pass  those  examinations  equally  with  a 
rich  man's  son  of  equal  mind,  who  can  take  a 
tutor  to  the  seashore  or  the  mountains  and 
coach  up  all  summer.  Thus  foundations,  es- 
tablished by  well-meaning  people  to  help  poor 
boys  self-respectingly  through  college,  be- 
come intellectual  prizes  for  those  who  do  not 
need  them.    That  is  all  wrong. 

Take  the  special  student  problem.  When  a 
college  or  university  is  founded,  it  needs  stu- 
dents: they  are  the  life-blood  of  the  institu- 
tion. Really  all  that  is  needed  to  make  a 
college  is  a  teacher  and  some  students:  build- 
ings are  not  indispensable,  but  students  the 
school  must  have.  Thus  it  is  apt  to  keep  its 
bars  down  and  its  entrance  requirements  flexi- 
ble. Special  students,  often  mature  men  and 
women,  who  are  not  prepared  to  pass  the 
freshman  examinations,  are  admitted  on  the 
recommendation  of  heads  of  departments,  to 
special  courses  they  are  well  fitted  to  take. 
Students  are  admitted  freely,  and  then  sifted 
out  afterward,  if  they  prove  unworthy  of  their 


TRAINING  FOR  LEADERSHIP    143 

opportunity:  not  a  bad  method,  by  the  way. 

A  dozen  years  pass,  and  the  institution 
wants  to  become  respectable.  It  is  just  as 
with  the  individual:  the  man,  at  first,  is  ab- 
sorbed in  money-getting,  and  when  he  has  it, 
yearns  for  respectability.  Now  getting  re- 
spectable, for  a  college  or  university,  is  called 
"raising  the  standard  of  scholarship."  Let 
this  not  be  misunderstood:  painstaking,  in- 
finitely laborious,  accurate  scholarship  is  a 
noble  aim,  well  worth  the  consistent  effort  of 
a  lifetime;  but  there  are  two  sides  to  raising 
the  standard  of  scholarship.  Does  an  educa- 
tional institution  exist  for  the  sake  of  its  repu- 
tation, or  to  serve  its  constituency?  If  it  seeks 
to  advance  its  reputation  at  the  expense  of  its 
fullest  and  best  service  to  those  who  need  its 
help,  is  it  not  recreant  to  its  duty  and  oppor- 
tunity? 

Well,  in  the  mood  cited,  the  institution 
raises  and  standardizes  its  entrance-require- 
ments and  generally  excludes  special  students. 
One  readily  sees  why:  it  is  much  easier  to 
work  with  the  regularly  prepared  freshman, 
he  fits  much  more  smoothly  and  comfortably 
into  the  machinery  of  the  institution.     Many 


144    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

a  wise  teacher  will  admit,  nevertheless,  that 
the  best  students  he  ever  taught  and  the  ones 
whose  lives  he  is  proudest  of  having  influ- 
enced, were  often  men  and  women,  thirty, 
forty,  fifty  years  of  age — teachers  who  sud- 
denly realized  that  the  ruts  of  their  calling 
had  become  so  deep  they  could  no  longer  see 
over  them,  ministers  awakening  to  the  fact 
that  they  had  given  all  their  store  and  must 
get  a  new  supply,  business  men  aware  of  a 
call  to  another  field  of  action — working  with 
a  consistent  earnestness  the  average  fledgling 
freshman  cannot  imagine — he  is  not  old 
enough ;  yet  generally  the  tendency  is  to  ex- 
clude such  students,  unless  they  will  go  back 
and  do  the  arduous,  and  often  for  them  use- 
less, work  of  preparing  to  pass  the  examina- 
tions for  entrance  to  the  freshman  class.  That, 
too,  is  all  wrong. 

The  American  college  and  university  stands 
to-day  at  the  parting  of  the  ways:  this  gen- 
eration will  largely  determine  its  future.  If 
the  American  college  and  university  ever  be- 
comes a  social  club  for  the  sons  and  daugh- 
ters of  the  rich,  an  institution  making  it  easy 
for  them  to  secure  business  and  professional 


TRAINING  FOR  LEADERSHIP    145 

opportunity  and  advancement,  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  their  poorer  fellows,  it  may  be  as  nec- 
essary to  disestablish  the  foundations  of  our 
great  universities,  as  statesmen  in  Europe 
thought  it  necessary  to  disestablish  the  mon- 
astic foundations  at  the  close  of  the  middle 
age.  They,  too,  began  as  educational  insti- 
tutions. If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  American 
college  and  university  remains  true  to  its  task, 
if  it  keeps  its  doors  open  and  its  spirit  demo- 
cratic, if  it  seeks  to  render  ever  larger  service 
to  the  great  public  and  to  develop  moral  lead- 
ership for  American  democracy,  then,  indeed, 
it  will  go  ever  forward  upon  its  noble  path. 


XXI 

DEMOCRACY  AND  SACRIFICE 

We  have  seen  the  conflict  of  ideas  in  the 
War:  the  German  philosophy  that  man  exists 
for  the  state,  the  contrasting  idea  of  democ- 
racy that  the  state  exists  for  man.  We  may 
well  ask  why  any  institution  should  be  re- 
garded as  sacred,  except  as  it  has  the  adventi- 
tious sacredness,  coming  from  time,  conven- 
tion and  hoary  tradition.  It  was  said  long  ago 
that  ''the  Sabbath  was  made  for  man  and  not 
man  for  the  Sabbath,"  and  the  statement  may 
be  universalized.  Every  institution  on  earth 
— marriage,  the  family,  education,  the  church, 
the  state — was  made  for  man  and  not  man 
for  the  institution.  Humanity  must  always 
be  the  end.  Why  should  we  perpetuate  any 
institution  that  does  not  serve  life?  Kant 
voiced  the  principle  in  his  second  imperative 
of  duty:  "Always  treat  humanity,  whether 
in  thine  own  person  or  that  of  any  other,  as 
an  end  withal,  and  never  as  a  means  only." 

146 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SACRIFICE     147 

Kant  was  a  Prussian  philosopher:  one  won- 
ders what  he  would  have  thought  of  the 
"Kanonen-Futter"  theory  of  manhood! 

An  organization  or  institution  is  only  a  ma- 
chine, an  instrument  for  a  purpose.  Thus  al- 
ways it  is  a  means,  never  an  end:  its  value  lies 
in  serving  its  purpose — the  end  of  human  life. 
So  the  whole  existing  order  must  justify  itself. 
Where  it  rests  on  forms  of  injustice,  it  must 
be  broken  or  destroyed,  and  there  is  no  reason 
to  fear  the  breaking. 

Thus  there  is  no  ''divine  right"  of  kings. 
They  represent  a  vested  interest,  surviving 
from  the  past.  They  must  justify  themselves 
by  the  service  of  those  under  them,  or  pass. 

Similarly,  there  is  no  divine  right  of  a  class 
or  caste,  enjoying  supremacy  or  special  priv- 
ilege. It  also  is  a  surviving  vested  interest, 
that  must  justify  itself,  or  be  swept  aside  as  an 
incubus. 

The  same  test  applies  to  an  empire.  It,  too, 
is  a  vested  interest,  developed  out  of  condi- 
tions prevailing  in  the  past.  If  it  does  not  jus- 
tify itself  by  the  largest  service  of  all  within 
it,  then  it,  too,  is  an  anachronistic  survival, 
no  longer  to  be  tolerated. 


148    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

The  principle  is  universal:  the  institution 
of  private  property,  the  controlling  power  of 
captains  of  industry,  the  capitalistic  system, 
finally,  the  state  itself,  in  every  form:  all  are 
vested  interests  that  may  be  permitted  to  con- 
tinue in  the  exercise  of  power  only  as  they 
prove  their  superiority  to  any  other  form  of 
organization  in  serving  the  good  of  all. 

This  does  not  mean  that,  under  democracy, 
the  individual  shall  fail  of  sacrifice  and  the 
dedication  to  something  higher  than  himself. 
That  is  the  glory  of  life,  transfiguring  human 
nature,  and  without  it,  life  sinks  to  sordid  sel- 
fishness. Your  life  is  worth,  not  what  you 
have,  but  what  you  are,  and  what  you  are  is 
determined  by  that  to  which  you  dedicate 
yourself.  Is  it  creature  comforts,  pleasure, 
selfish  privilege,  or  the  largest  life  and  the 
fullest  service  of  humanity?  What  you  have 
is  merely  the  condition,  the  important  ques- 
tion is,  what  do  you  do  with  it?  Is  it  wealth, 
prosperity:  do  you  sit  down  comfortably  on 
the  fact  of  it,  to  secure  all  the  selfish  pleasures 
possible;  or  do  you  regard  your  fortunate  cir- 
cumstances as  so  much  more  opportunity  and 
obligation  of  leadership  and  service?     Is  it 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SACRIFICE     149 

poverty,  even  starvation:  do  you  whine  and 
grovel,  or  stand  erect,  with  shut  teeth,  and 
wring  heroic  manhood  from  the  breast  of  suf- 
fering? 

That  is  why  peace  can  never  be  an  end:  it, 
too,  is  merely  a  condition  or  means.  The 
question  is,  what  do  you  do  with  your  peace, 
for  peace  may  mean  merely  sloth  and  cow- 
ardly ease,  where  war  may  mean  unselfish 
heroism.  That  is  what  the  peace  promoters 
forget.  War  has  its  brutalities,  and  terrible 
indeed  they  are:  unleashed  hate,  lust,  cruelty 
and  revenge;  but  war  has  its  heroisms.  It 
calls  out  the  devotion  to  something  higher 
than  the  individual  from  even  the  commonest 
of  men.  To-day  all  over  the  earth,  ordinary 
men  are  quietly  going  out  to  probable  death 
or  mutilation  in  its  most  horrible  forms,  and 
going  for  the  sake  of  an  ideal  larger  than 
themselves.  Women  are  doing  even  more 
than  that.  For  it  is  not  so  hard  to  die,  but  to 
send  out  those  you  love,  dearer  than  life  itself, 
to  almost  certain  death — that,  indeed,  is  diffi- 
cult, and  women  are  doing  it  everywhere  with 
a  smile  on  their  lips  and  choked-back  tears. 

Peace,  on  the  other  hand,  has  its  virtues: 


I50    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

the  softening  and  refining  of  life,  gradual  de- 
velopment of  sympathy,  achievement  of  com- 
fort and  beauty;  but  peace  has  its  vices.  In 
times  of  peace  and  prosperity  there  seems  to 
be  no  great  cause  at  stake.  Of  course,  always 
it  is  there,  but  we  do  not  see  it.  We  become 
increasingly  absorbed  in  selfish  interests,  in 
the  good  of  our  immediate  family.  Thus 
petty,  time-serving  selfishness  is  the  vice  pe- 
culiarly characteristic  of  times  of  peace  and 
prosperity.  Consider,  for  instance,  the  spirit 
of  France  during  the  closing  years  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  at  the  present  dark, 
but  pregnant,  hour  of  destiny. 

Thus  the  question  is  not  whether  you  have 
peace  or  war,  but  what  you  do  with  your  peace 
or  war.  It  is  not  whether  you  are  rich  or 
poor,  but  what  you  do  with  your  riches  or 
poverty. 

Suppose  we  were  able  to  reconstruct  our  en- 
tire social  and  industrial  world,  so  that  every 
human  being  would  have  plenty  to  eat,  plenty 
to  wear  and  a  comfortable  house  to  live  in: 
would  we  have  the  kingdom  of  heaven?  Not 
necessarily:  we  might  have  merely  a  comfort- 
able, well-decorated  pig-sty,  if  men  lived  to 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SACRIFICE     151 

nothing  higher  than  pigs.  "Man  cannot  live 
by  bread  alone,"  important  as  bread  is,  but  by 
dedication  to  the  things  of  the  spirit. 

Thus  there  must  ever  be  the  capacity  for 
self-forgetfulness,  self-sacrifice,  the  dedica- 
tion of  life  to  supreme  aims,  but  that  does  not 
mean  the  dedication  of  man  to  the  institution. 
Rather  it  is  the  consecration  to  the  welfare  of 
humanity.  Man  for  the  State  means  autoc- 
racy and  imperialism;  Man  for  Mankind  is 
the  soul  of  democracy.  That  is  the  ideal  to 
which  we  must  rise,  if  democracy  is  to  prove 
itself  worthy  to  be  the  form  of  human  society 
for  the  great  future. 

This  ideal  is  realized  through  many  lesser 
forms  and  instruments,  but  always  with  the 
same  final  test.  The  family,  for  instance,  is 
one  of  these  lesser  forms,  and  the  subordina- 
tion of  the  individual  to  the  family  unit  is  just. 
Thus  there  is  a  measure  of  right  in  seeking 
first  the  interest  of  the  family  group ;  but  when 
this  is  sought  to  the  end  of  special  privilege 
and  debauching  luxury,  against  the  welfare 
of  all,  it  becomes,  as  we  have  seen,  an  evil. 

There  is,  similarly,  a  certain  justice  in  the 
subordination  of  the  individual  to  the  social 


152    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

class  or  group  interest.  It  is  right  that  arti- 
sans should  unite  in  trade  unions,  that  em- 
ployers should  get  together  in  associations  for 
common  benefit.  One  need  only  contrast  the 
conditions  where  each  workman  had  to  bid  in 
competition  against  all  others,  and  each  man- 
ufacturer, the  same,  to  realize  the  advance 
made  through  group  union  and  cooperation. 
When  either  group,  however,  seeks  to  further 
its  own  interest  at  the  expense  of  the  welfare 
of  the  whole  society,  as  in  securing  class  legis- 
lation, achieving  monopolies,  holding  efficient 
workers  to  the  level  of  production  of  the  slow- 
est and  least  capable  of  the  group,  then  the 
class  or  group  spirit  becomes  an  evil  that  must 
be  fought  for  the  good  of  all. 

It  is  exactly  the  same  with  the  nation.  Its 
interest  is  justly  served  only  in  harmony  with 
the  welfare  of  humanity.  Any  current  prob- 
lem will  illustrate  the  principle,  as,  for  in- 
stance, that  of  immigration. 

Certainly  the  nation  has  the  right  to  pro- 
hibit immigration  which  produces  unassimi- 
lated  plague-spots  and  threatens  to  cause  ra- 
cial deterioration,  as  in  phases  of  Oriental  im- 
migration to  the  Pacific  coast.     Similarly,  it 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SACRIFICE    153 

is  right  to  restrict  immigration  that  would 
further  economic  prosperity,  at  the  expense  of 
the  manhood  of  the  nation.  We  must  answer 
the  question,  whether  we  want  factories  or 
men.  It  is  desirable  to  have  some  of  both,  of 
course,  but  when  one  is  to  be  obtained  at  the 
expense  of  the  other,  it  is  manhoood  that  must 
be  the  deciding  end. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  it  comes  to  refus- 
ing a  refuge  to  the  poor  and  oppressed,  who 
are  physically  and  morally  acceptable,  but 
lack  a  small  amount  of  money,  or  are  unable 
to  respond  to  a  literary  test,  then  the  welfare 
of  humanity  demands  the  opposite  decision. 
Better  give  them  the  fifty  dollars — a  healthy 
slave  was  worth  more  than  that  in  the  old 
days.  So  teach  them  to  read  and  write.  The 
nation  can  readily  pay  the  small  economic 
price  and  accept  the  incidental  difficulties  for 
the  sake  of  the  larger  end. 

Thus  the  deciding  principle  must  always 
be  the  welfare,  happiness,  growth,  intelli- 
gence, helpfulness  of  each  individual  in  har- 
mony with  all  others.  Humanity  is  incarnate 
in  each  man.  While,  therefore,  the  individ- 
ual must  dedicate  and,  at  times,  sacrifice  him- 


154    THE  SOUL'  OF  DEMOCRACY 

self,  it  is  for  the  sake,  not  of  the  state,  church 
or  other  institution,  but  for  the  welfare  of  all 
— Man  for  Mankind. 

From  so  many  sources  the  view  finds  ex- 
pression that  modern  life  has  been  "weakened 
by  humanitarianism."  If  there  is  truth  in 
the  view,  we  would  better  take  account  of  it 
and  radically  revise  our  ethical  philosophy. 
If  it  is  false,  it  is  a  damning  error,  the  reitera- 
tion of  which  tends  to  undermine  all  that  has 
been  achieved  for  the  spirit. 

An  interesting  comment  on  the  view  is  the 
fact  that,  in  spite  of  all  its  horrors,  this  War 
has  given  no  attested  instance  of  arrant  cow- 
ardice on  any  front.  Cruelty,  lust,  brutality, 
hate:  these  have  appeared  in  unspeakable 
guise,  but  apparently  no  cowardice  or  weak 
timidity;  yet  the  mail  clad  heroes  of  ancient 
wars,  who  met  their  adversaries  face  to  face, 
were  subjected  to  no  such  strain  as  the  men 
standing  in  trenches  waiting  momentarily 
death  or  mutilation  from  an  unseen  foe.  No, 
modern  life  has  not  lost  strong  fiber  and  is  ca- 
pable of  supreme  heroism. 

The  old  society  secured  its  leadership 
through  noblesse  oblige — the  obligation  of  no- 


DEMOCRACY  AND  SACRIFICE    155 

bility.  Men  of  aristocratic  family  and  rank 
felt  that,  because  they  stood  above  the  people, 
they  owed  a  certain  leadership  and  service, 
and  they  gave  it,  often  in  abundant  measure, 
but  always  condescendingly  from  above. 

We  have  lost  "noblesse  oblige":  we  may 
even  be  glad  it  is  gone,  if  we  can  substitute  for 
it  something  larger  and  better.  It  is  not  the 
obligation  of  nobility,  but  the  obligation  of 
humanity  that  is  the  need:  to  realize  that  all 
power  is  obligation.  As  you  can,  you  owe; 
and  as  you  know,  you  owe.  If  you  have 
money,  it  is  so  much  obligation  of  leadership 
and  service.  If  you  have  talent,  education, 
social  or  political  influence,  it  is  all  so  much 
obligation  of  leadership  and  service.  If,  as 
individuals,  we  can  generally  realize  that  and 
act  upon  it,  then  indeed  we  may  hope  to  carry 
to  successful  completion  the  experiment  of 
democracy  and  see  our  beloved  country  ful- 
fill the  measure  of  moral  leadership  to  which 
we  believe  she  is  called  among  the  nations  of 
the  earth,  but  fulfilling  it  not  as  master  over 
slave,  nor  as  one  empire  among  others,  but  as 
a  more  experienced  brother  toward  others  fol- 
lowing the  same  open  path. 


XXII 
THE  HOUR  OF  SACRIFICE 

The  supreme  world  crisis  is  on.  We  have 
entered  the  War  in  the  purest  spirit  of  democ- 
racy. We  state  frankly  in  advance  that  we 
want  no  indemnity,  no  extension  of  territory. 
We  war  with  no  people,  except  as  that  people 
identifies  itself  with  aggressive  autocracy  and 
imperialism,  imperilling  our  safety,  as  of  all 
democracies,  and  seeking  to  ride  tyrannically 
and  unjustly  over  the  rights  and  liberties  of 
other  peoples.  Thus  we  enter  the  War  solely 
for  the  cause  of  democracy  and  humanity. 

The  hour  of  sacrifice  has  struck  for  the 
American  people:  will  it  rise  to  the  test? 
When  one  considers  the  characteristics  of  our 
surface  life  for  recent  decades — the  devotion 
to  money-getting,  the  rapid  increase  of  sense- 
less and  debauching  luxury,  the  reckless 
frivolity,  the  unthinking  haste  and  selfish 
pleasure-seeking — one  questions.   Underneath, 

156 


THE  HOUR  OF  SACRIFICE     157 

however,  is  a  tremendous  latent  idealism. 
We  are  young,  enthusiastic,  capable  of  glor- 
ious consecration.  Cynical  disillusionment  is 
all  upon  the  surface — the  cult  of  the  clique 
of  cleverness,  uprooted  from  the  soil  of  com- 
mon life  and  the  deeps  of  the  eternal  verities. 
Beneath  in  the  great  mass  of  the  people  is  pro- 
found faith  in  life,  deep  trust  in  the  ideal, 
belief  in  the  great  future  of  humanity.  De- 
mocracy will  justify  itself.  We  shall  rise  to 
the  test;  but  how  we  need  to  hear  and  heed  the 
call! 

"Awake  America"  means  Americans 
awake!  For  in  democracy  the  individual  is 
the  soul.  On  each  person  rests  the  respon- 
sibility. Let  us  accept  the  bitter  burden  and 
meet  the  supreme  test,  giving  time,  money, 
service,  life  and  those  we  love  better  than  life, 
for  the  sake  of  the  safer,  freer,  nobler  world 
that  is  to  be.  Since  we  stood  apart  so  long 
and  entered  the  horrible  devastation  so  late, 
it  is  our  privilege  to  do  all  we  can  to  save  the 
spiritual  heritage  of  humanity,  to  keep  our 
hearts  clean  from  the  corrosive  acid  of  na- 
tional and  racial  hatred,  to  do  all  in  our 
power  to  remove  it  from  the  breasts  of  others. 


158    THE  SOUL  OF  DEMOCRACY 

Injustice  in  high  places  is  possible  only  be- 
cause there  is  injustice  in  the  hearts  of  men. 
To  overthrow  tyranny  is  but  the  initial  step 
of  emancipation:  unless  the  tyrant  hate  in  the 
heart  is  dethroned,  the  external  tyrant,  in 
some  form  of  social  injustice  will  surely  re- 
turn. He  who  conquers  hate  and  the  lust  for 
revenge  in  his  own  breast  is  spiritually  free 
and  master  of  the  tyrant  that  wrongs  him. 
Thus  it  is  our  privilege  and  duty  to  hate  no 
one;  but  to  hate  injustice,  greed,  tyranny,  ag- 
gressive selfishness,  the  wicked  ambitions  of 
autocratic  imperialism,  to  resist  and  help  to 
overthrow  them,  and  so  do  our  part  in  bring- 
ing in  the  free  brotherhood  of  the  nations  and 
peoples  in  one  humanity,  that  will  be  the  dawn 
of  the  longed-for  era  of  universal  and  per- 
manent peace  for  mankind. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


The  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  a 
few  of  the  Macmillan  books  on  kindred  subjects 


League  of  Nations:  A  Chapter  in  the  His- 
tory of  the  Movement 

By  Theodore  Marburg 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $  .^o 

The  "League  of  Nations,"  by  Theodore  Marburg, 
formerly^  United  States  JVIinister  to  Belgium,  presents  a 
chapter  in  the  history  of  the  movement.  It  is  confined 
largely  to  developments  lA-ith  which  the  author  has  been 
personally  connected,  and  visages  the  probable  workings 
of  a  League  of  Nations.  Among  other  interesting  episodes 
is  the  account  of  the  author's  call  on  Sir  Edward  Grey, 
who  proved,  later,  to  be  the  League's  best  friend  in  Europe! 
Mr.  Marburg's  wide  acquaintance  in  government  and 
diplomatic  circles  evidently  stood  him  in  good  stead  in 
prosecuting  the  work  with  which  he  was  charged  as  chair- 
man of  the  Foreign  Organization  Committee  of  the 
League  to  Enforce  Peace. 

A  League  to  Enforce  Peace 

By  Robert  Goldsmith 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1  .so 

An  authoritative  statement  of  the  proposals  put  forth 
by  the  League  formed  in  Independence  Hall  on  July  17th, 
1915.  ^  Propounded  in  America,  this  project  for  a  league 
of  nations  to  prevent  war  has  found  favor  with  those  high 
in  the  councils  of  all  the  belligerent  governments.  Mr. 
Goldsmith  gives  a  clear  and  sympathetic  outline  of  the 
plans  of  the  League,  and  shows  how  the  intelligence  of 
the  world  may  be  so  directed  and  organized  as  to  render 
future  war  less  likely. 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers         64-66  Fifth  Avenue         New  York 


Nationalism 

By  Sir  Rabindranath  Talgore 

Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.2^ 

This  volume  contains  Sir  Rabindranath's 
famous  lecture,  Nationalism,  the  lecture  which 
of  all  of  those  delivered  by  him  on  his  recent 
tour  of  the  United  States  provoked  the  most 
discussion  and  comment.  It  is  a  plea  for  the 
wiping  out  of  nationalism,  a  vision  of  the  time 
when  men  shall  live  not  as  citizens  of  this  or 
that  country,  but  as  citizens  of  the  world. 
With  many  striking  illustrations  from  history, 
the  distinguished  author  points  out  the  dam- 
age that  has  been  done  in  the  past  through  the 
spirit  of  nationalism  and  shows  how  mankind 
can  reach  its  highest  development  only  when 
we  do  not  think  as  peoples  of  different  coun- 
tries but  as  of  one  great  federation. 

In  addition  to  this  lecture,  the  book  like- 
wise includes  Nationalism  in  Japan,  which 
was  presented  in  Japan  by  Sir  Rabindranath 
on  his  visit  there,  and  Nationalism  in  India. 
It  closes  with  a  poem,  The  Sunset  oj  the  Cen- 
tury. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers         64-66  Fifth  Avenue         New  York 


American  World  Policies 

By  Walter  E.  Weyl 

Author  of  The  New  Democracy 

Cloth,  8vo,  $2.2^ 

"One  can  almost  afford  to  throw  away  everything  else 
in  print  on  the  subjects  covered  and  take  this  book  as  a 
starting  point  from  which  to  face  the  future." — Chicago 
Tribune. 

"A  keen  analysis  of  the  world  forces  to  which  our  domes- 
tic policy  must  be  adjusted  if  we  are  to  keep  our  national 
integrity  and  play  an  effective  part  in  shaping  inter- 
national affairs.  It  is  an  essay  in  clarification,  an  attempt 
to  give  the  American  layman  the  facts  upon  which  to  base 
an  intelligent  foreign  policy.  Dr.  Weyl  has  wisely  avoided 
the  temptation  to  write  a  paper  constitution  for  a  hypo- 
thetical world  state,  and  has  chosen  instead  to  offer  a 
preface  to  international  politics.  It  is  this  quality  of 
self-restraint,  combined  with  his  great  ability  to  think 
and  write  clearly,  that  distinguishes  Dr.  Weyl's  volume. 
American  World  Policies  is  an  extremely  valuable  aid  to 
the  intellectual  preparedness  of  American  statesmen  and 
laymen  in  this  time  of  international  crisis." — Robert 
Bruere,  in  The  New  Republic. 

"A  tonic  and  salutary  volume,  driving  hard  to  the  reali- 
ties that  underlie  American  action  and  mercilessly  exposing 
the  dangers  that  lurk  in  what  to  the  casual  eye  seems  evi- 
dence of  national  success. " — New  York  Evening  Post. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers        64-66  Fifth  Avenue         New  York 


Young  France  and  New  America 

By  Pierre  de  Lanux 

^  $1.25 

This  book  points  out  the  striking  convergence  of  the 
national  aspirations  and  standards  of  individual  life  of  the 
Americans  and  the  French  particularly  those  of  the 
younger  generation.  It  gives  an  inspiring  picture  of  the 
opportunities  for  development  open  to  the  youth  of  both 
countries  after  the  war. 

The  subject  is  treated  in  five  chapters  under  the  follow- 
ing headings: 

I  Formation  of  the  Present  French  Generation 
II  About  America  in  191 7 

III  Promises  of  Concrete  Cooperation 

IV  Literary  Exchanges 
V  Conclusions 


France  Bears  the  Burden 

By  Granville  Fortescue 

^  $1-25 

Sketches  and  impressions  of  France  in  war-time.  The 
author  knows  the  facts  of  France's  suffering,  and  his  ob- 
servations of  the  country  and  the  people  cover  many 
phases  not  generally  discussed. 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Publishers         64-66  Fifth  Avenue         New  York 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


4UN161970 


^  mz; 


RECEIVED 

MAY  2  0  '586 


B^rm  L9-40m-7,'56(C790s4)444 


^  1158  01114  0067 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA   001  101  618  5 


1        11     lilliiiliin: 

1 

